Heavens

Heavens is a twenty-minute work for school choirs, strings, piano and traditional instruments, setting spiritual texts in eleven languages: Arabic, Church Slavonic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Latin, Pali and Spanish. It was designed to bring together young and amateur musicians from Belgium, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Poland and India for the 2020 World Choir Games in Antwerp. The pandemic prevented the joint performance, although rehearsals had begun in each country.

The composition required careful study of different musical cultures and a balance between artistic ambition and accessibility. Western harmony, additive rhythms, different score-reading traditions and contrasting choral practices all raised questions about how musical meaning travels between cultures. Videos of children around the world rehearsing the work became an important part of the project’s inspiration.