N & N Festival: Gwilym Simcock

By Lyn McKinney BBC Norfolk

The choir have performed at the festival for the last five years

UK Jazz sensation Gwilym Simcock has composed I Prefer the Gorgeous Freedom for Norfolk's Voice Project Choir to sing at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival.

At only 27, the established pianist and composer has been described by fellow players as a creative genius.

Gwilym has directed the choir from afar, preparing them for the event.

"It's been a big learning process for me to go too-and-fro with e-mails and phone-calls to get the music presented in the way I like it," said Gwilym.

Gwilym chose 'freedom' as a theme for his new work and went looking for poetry that he could set to music.

He was thrilled to come across a poem by someone who'd been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.

"There was a fantastic book I found whilst scouring various bookshops, of poetry written by some of the inmates," said Gwilym.

"To get the opportunity to set those fantastic pieces of prose to music was a great thing to do," he added.

People of all ages and walks of life are members of the Voice Project Choir.

They range from a retired piano tuner to a UEA drama student, but they all share a love of music and many of them have sung with the choir since its inception.

High standard

"You have to be quite keen to take it seriously because the music is brilliant and it requires people to make a bit of an effort," said one choir member.

"I think the standard is high and it's getting better every time," they added.

Writing for a choir can be even more challenging than writing for an orchestra, according to Gwilym.

"The great thing about having words is that it completely changes the way you approach music, because instrumentals can move away from being human. With words, you have to focus on that humanistic element," he said.

You can hear the world premiere of I Prefer the Gorgeous Freedom by Gwilym Simcock and the Voice Project Choir at Norwich Cathedral on Saturday, 9 May, 2009, at 8pm.