St John the Evangelist Church on Hills Road, Cambridge, will be the opening venue for a concert tour with a difference on Wednesday 7 May, at 7.30pm, when viola da gamba player Sarah Small embarks on her 26 venue, 2500 mile UK tour – by bike.
Sarah’s pedalling marathon will see her play in halls and churches across the country, from Aldeburgh Jubilee Hall (8 May) and The Belfry Centre in Overstrand (11 May) in the east of England, to venues as far apart as Northallerton, Shetland, Liverpool, Wales and Southampton.
The Northamptonshire based musician, who holds a Masters with Distinction from the Royal College of Music, has taken on this challenging journey for very specific reasons:
“My aim is to demonstrate a new and sustainable way for musicians to tour, massively reducing the environmental impact of the traditional zipping between distant cities with no thought for the environmental consequences. This works for audiences too as they have shorter distances to travel as I visit numerous smaller venues along the way.”
Revd Canon James Shakespeare, Vicar at St John’s, said:
“We are delighted that Sarah Small has chosen St John’s as the first venue on her ambitious cycling tour. Her desire to use the power of music, and the way we access it, to show that there are better ways of caring for the earth, is very close to our hearts.”
Sarah has curated several nature inspired programmes for the tour, each reflecting the elements and expressing the sentiments felt by many during these unstable times. Centred around Good Againe by Tobias Hume (1605), the opening concert at St John’s features rarely performed Spring from Christopher Simpson’s The Seasons, and the premiere of specially commissioned* work Good Again? by Lillie Harris, hinting of the re-emergence of nature.
Sarah will be joined by Cambridgeshire based viola da gamba players Emily Ashton and Isaac Louth for the performance at St John’s.
Tickets for the concert at St John the Evangelist Church Cambridge are £15, or pay what you can, on the door.
LINKS
Facilities
- Assistance dogs welcome
- mostly flat terrain
- wheelchair access
- wheelchair accessible
Accessibility Facilities
- Assistance dogs welcome
- Blue Badge Parking
- Designated wheelchair public toilet
- Wheel chair accessible
- wheelchair access
- Wheelchair accessible
