Five Days That Changed The World – a new choral work by Bob Chilcott

WORCESTER, U.K. - July 19, 2013 - PRLog -- Chilcott is one of four international conductors leading workshops during the week-long event featuring a range of public concerts, street singing and workshops culminating in the Gala Concert in Worcester Cathedral when the piece will be performed.

Chilcott worked with the poet Charles Bennett, with whom he has collaborated for several years, to find an idea that would embrace the festival’s theme of peace and unity. Bennett came up with five new texts identifying events that have brought people together and, by their nature, became a force for good:

Thursday 29th March 1455: The invention of printing

Friday 1st August 1834: The abolition of slavery

Monday 14th December 1903: The first powered flight

Friday 28th September 1928: The discovery of penicillin

Wednesday 12th April 1961: The first man in space

The dates are as precise as can be imagined, with the exception of the invention of the date of printing (29 March), which is Bennett’s birthday.

Chilcott acknowledges the Catalonian composer Antoni Rosa Marbà, whose work on a similar theme, commissioned by the Catalan Children’s Choir Federation originally sparked the piece.

Five Days That Changed The World is published by Oxford University Press.