UCB in world music premiere

Dawn, Wisdom is by Emily Hazrati, described by BBC Radio 3 as “a rising star composer”.

It will be the main item at a free concert by the band at Holy Cross Church on Saturday 26 October 2024.

The work follows a year of collaboration between Emily and UCB, as part of the Adopt a Composer scheme organised by the musicians’ organisation, Making Music.

The first movement imagines a mysterious dawn rising over the river Uck, on a calm and hazy morning in autumn.

The middle movement is inspired by flashes of morning sunlight catching the surrounding hills of the South Downs and the Weald.

The final movement is lively and energetic as it looks forward to the start of a new day.

Emily said the idea behind the composition came from the name Uckfield, possibly meaning ‘open land of a man called Ucca’. She said Ucca is a pet form of the Anglo Saxon name ‘Uhtraed’, meaning ‘dawn-wisdom’.

Emily said:

“Upon making this discovery I was absorbed by an image of the sun rising in a distant past, and before I knew it, I had composed a fragment of music inspired by this vision.”

The audience can also look forward to the popular and dramatic Horizons, by Paul Lovatt-Cooper, where choirs of musicians will play from different parts of Holy Cross Church.

The programme will feature other works exploring space and time, including Derek Bourgeois’s Serenade, Op 22, a light-hearted and mischievous, piece that frequently changes time signature. Bourgeois wrote it for his wedding to tease the guests as they left the ceremony.