From Adams to Elgar, via The Great Barrier Reef

Cassie To's new work, Songs of the Reef, receives its world premiere on Sunday 23rd October. A Crouch End Festival Chorus commission, it is a symphony of the sea, exploring the deterioration and resurgence of the Great Barrier Reef, and incorporates underwater sounds recorded by the eminent marine biologist, Professor Steve Simpson, who collaborated with Sir David Attenborough on his landmark series, Blue Planet 2. The colours and sounds of this extraordinary world are brought to life by the two choirs and orchestra.

It is, perhaps, surprising how much of the Reef's marine life is dependent on communication through sound. Human noise, from passing ships, urban development, wind farms, for example - can have a devastating impact on the creatures that inhabit the Reef, yet this is, Cassie To believes, the easiest pollutant to manage.

Also featured in the concert are Elgar's Sea Pictures with the young contralto, Jessica Dandy, and John Adams's monumental Harmonium, with his setting of the poetry of John Donne and Emily Dickinson, which ends, appropriately, with "...ahh the sea".