Composer Helen Grime will be one of four featured artists at the 76th Aldeburgh Festival in June 2025, joining tenor Allan Clayton, composer Daniel Kidane and violinist Leila Josefowicz. The festival will also feature World Premieres by Wise Music composers Brian Elias, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Tyshawn Sorey and a UK Premiere by Betsy Jolas.
Grime’s music is frequently heard far beyond the borders of her native Scotland and is performed by the world’s leading orchestras, among them the London Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Gothenburg Symphony. In 2024 alone, her works were performed in 12 countries, including Japan, Australia and South Korea. Herself a former Britten Pears Young Artist, Grime’s festival residency will showcase the wide breadth of her work, from the intimate string quartets to a rousing new work for soprano and orchestra.
Helen Grime Festival Highlights
Missa Brevis (2023)
June 15, The Britten Pears Chamber Choir
The Britten Pears Chamber Choir performs the short mass at the Festival Service at Aldeburgh Church.
Folk (2024)
June 15, The Knussen Chamber Orchestra
Ryan Wigglesworth, Conductor
Claire Booth, Soprano
Written for acclaimed soprano Claire Booth, Folk is a Britten Pears Arts co-commission that had its World Premiere in September with Booth, Wigglesworth and the BBC Scottish Symphony.
Prayer (2020)
20 June, Britten Pears Contemporary Ensemble
Grime is one of the composition tutors working with Britten Pears Arts Young Artist composers and Prayer is heard alongside six new works from these young artists.
Violin Concerto (2016)
21 June, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo, conductor
Featured Artist Leila Josefowicz performs a concerto she describes as “a romantic twist on British contemporary music, with a driving rhythm. It goes places which other pieces haven’t, energetically speaking.”
Night Songs (2012)
22 June, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo, conductor
In their second concert at the Festival, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo perform Grime’s Night Songs, written for Oliver Knussen’s 60th birthday in 2012.
String Quartet No. 1 (2014)
String Quartet No. 2 (2021)
24 June, Heath Quartet, Fibonacci Quartet
Grime’s two string quartets are heard side by side for the first time.
Harp of the North (2004)
25 June, Paul Watkins
Harp of the North is inspired by lines from Walter Scott’s folk-inflected poem The Lady of the Lake.
The festival will also feature Wise Music Classical works by Carl Nielsen, Hugo Alfvén, Max Richter, Edvard Grieg, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kaija Saariaho, Richard Strauss, Jean Sibelius, Thea Musgrave, Joan Tower, Malcolm Arnold, Joseph Horovitz and Hector Berlioz.
