Bird Suite from The Lost Words

Conductor Notes:

I excerpted only the seven movements about birds from the full-concert work The Lost Words: A Spell Book, to make this shorter “Bird Suite” that could be performed with piano only.  When performing this, we do not show the book’s artwork by Jackie Morris.  I did have members of the choir read each spell before we sang it, to deepen the audiences’ enjoyment of the playfulness of these texts and the delightful way in which each composer set it to music.

Note that this suite is not published as a set by Cypress, but one can buy the separate movements.

The full work is an outstanding, multimedia concert.  Please see its description here. Note that one does not have the right to show the book’s artwork during the show without paying the author/illustrator through the literary agent, David Higham Associates in London.

Text Source

Robert Macfarlane