Woods, words, songs - Folkestone New Music

Woods, words, songs
New songs by John Woolrich and Zoe Gilbert
Hannah Dienes-Williams (soprano)
Zoe Gilbert (reader)
Josie Wakefield (flute), Jacob Jordan (clarinet), Agatha Parkin
(violin)
Lize Dreyer (cello)

Soprano HANNAH DIENES-WILLIAMS is an exciting new voice in the world of contemporary music. This past year, she made her Salzburger Festspiele debut in Nono’s ‘Io, Frammento dal Prometeo’ alongside debuts with Riot Ensemble, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and London Sinfonietta. In 2026, Hannah makes her debut with the Savaria Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of Sebastian Black’s one-woman opera Unmentionable Scenes, as well as bringing two new solo voice shows to London and Manchester, exploring medieval texts and narcissism. Other highlights include a return to
the Salzburger Festspiele with PHACE and Cantando Admont for Huber’s Miserere Hominibus, Mark Simpson’s The Immortal with Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and EXAUDI, Furrer’s Lotofagos I for Louth Contemporary Music Festival, and a German tour of Rafael Marino Arcaro’s biografia do orvalho written for her with ensemble UTAK.

Tickets are priced at £15 but you can also pay what you can

ZOE GILBERT is the author of two novels, Folk (Bloomsbury 2018), which  was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and adapted for BBC
Radio, and Mischief Acts (Bloomsbury 2022) which was a Sunday Times  Book of the Year. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies and journals
in the UK and internationally, on BBC Radio, and won prizes including the Costa Short Story Award. She is the co-editor with Lily Dunn of the recovery anthology, A Wild and Precious Life (Unbound, 2021), and is co-director of London Lit Lab, where she teaches creative writing courses on folklore, folk
tales, the fantastic and enchantment, and also mentors writers. As well as fiction, she has written librettos for classical composers and writes and presents folklore and foraging segments for the popular nature podcast, As the Season Turns. She is a Senior Visiting Fellow in creative writing at the University of Suffolk, but she lives in Kent, where the landscape is inspiring her third novel.

JOHN WOOLRICH’s music has been performed throughout the world by leading orchestras including the London Philharmonic, the Philharmonia, the
Academy of St Martin in the Fields and all the BBC orchestras. He has written five pieces for the Proms. Recent pieces include commissions for the London Sinfonietta, the Nash Ensemble, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. John Woolrich has been Artistic Director of both the Aldeburgh Festival and Dartington Summer School, Composer in Association with the Britten Sinfonia and Professor of Music at Brunel University. He was until recently an Associate Artist of the Gulbenkian Arts Centre at the University of Kent.

MAY HANDS  is making new work in response to Zoe’s words. May’s practice explores material memory, urban detritus and the poetics of
everyday surfaces. Gathering fragments from urban and natural environments- discarded packaging, woven fibres, organic remnants- Hands constructs assemblages that reframe overlooked matter as culturally and emotionally charged.