Silver From Distant Suns
a programme of music and poetry with new works by composer John Charles Hyslop
Sunday, 4th October, 2026, 3:30pm (Doors at 3:00)
The Assembly Rooms, Presteigne
Folk memory, legends, place names, the landscape around us - all are whispered histories of our distant, deep past, not of our ancestors from one time alone but of all who have lived and left traces in history’s river, filling the time and space between their time and land and Radnorshire today.
Silver from Distant Suns is a programme of music and poetry that give voice to those ancient people - today's folk legends - and their times. Lyric poems of Charles Wilkinson - set to music and performed by Marion Rowlatt and string quartet - give us glimpses of who and how they were. The profoundly simple garden haiku of Francesca Kay - set to music for piano and oboe, performed by Ruth Watson and Georgia Vale - open quiet paths for hearing the whispers. The 2nd Neolithic Suite, scored for Oboe, Piano and strings, will offer impressions of the kinds of songs and dances familiar to those inhabitants of truly 'old Radnor'. All the pieces being performed are premieres composed for this event.
John Charles Hyslop studied music performance with Murray Grodner, Gary Karr & Josef Gingold; ethnomusicology with Alan Merriam; composition with Bernhard Heiden, Iannis Xenakis, and all the masters during many years as a double bassist in orchestras, primarily in Mexico and the US, latterly in the West Midlands and Mid-Wales. He is now retired and resides happily in Presteigne.
Ruth Watson, oboe, is originally from Hampshire but came to live in the Welsh hills nearly 30 years ago via York University, the Banff Centre in Canada, London and Portugal, and having played with many orchestras en route including the National Youth Orchestra, Scottish Opera, Scottish Chamber Orchestra , Ulster Orchestra and Bournemouth orchestras, WNO, London Sinfonietta and five years as principal oboe in the Orquestra do Porto.
The string quartet is comprised of Georgia Vale, Clare Horgan, Mich Mohajer and Hilary Summers. Georgia Vale trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London and the Utrecht School of the Arts. Alongside her freelance and teaching work, she writes and publishes her own books under the name Hey Presto Strings. Clare Horgan trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London and then played in the CBSO for many years. She left the orchestra to bring up her children in Shropshire alongside a career teaching the violin. She now enjoys freelance playing and breeding sheep. In addition to her service as a consultant in the NHS, Mich Mohajer has played viola professionally, including with the European Doctors' Orchestra. She has recently retired from the NHS and is pursuing a new career as a yoga teacher. Hilary Summers studied music at UEA and Birmingham Conservatoire. She then worked for many years teaching the 'cello and piano in schools and privately. She moved to Presteigne in 2018 and plays as a freelance across the region.
Tickets - £10
Available at The Workhouse Gallery, Presteigne or online at: https://wegottickets.com/f/22820
This event is a fundraiser for Mid Border Arts