Celebrating 25 Years of Oxford Song

Celebrating 25 Years of Oxford Song comes to The Olivier Hall on Saturday 24 October, the finale of the 25th anniversary of the Oxford International Song Festival. This year's theme is 'Love Songs', and the whole evening is built around it.

It opens with a new work, Marriage of...?, by Associate Composer Emily Hazrati and librettist Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh, which is set behind the scenes at a wedding reception. From there, the Choir of The Queen's College joins the soloists for Debussy's cantata La Damoiselle élue, set to a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The rest of the night is filled with songs and ensembles by Schubert, Chaminade, Bolcom and Brahms.

The line-up is a big one: Nardus Williams and Katy Thomson on soprano, Katie Bray on mezzo-soprano, Stuart Jackson on tenor, and Rafael Fingerlos on baritone. Jocelyn Freeman and Sholto Kynoch are on piano, and the Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford, joins in, with Owen Rees and Lucy Bradley directing. It's a lot of voices on one stage, so the programme moves between solo songs and larger ensembles.

Practicalities: the concert runs from 7:15pm to 9:15pm, two hours with a 20-minute interval. The Olivier Hall is at St Edward's School, Woodstock Rd, Oxford OX2 7NN. Tickets are between £10 and £38. The hall bar stays open throughout the afternoon and evening, and there's a celebratory drink offered at the end of the concert.