Sarah, along with fellow Newnhamite and MazeMusic composer Janet Wheeler, was delighted to be asked to write a song for a recording session for Newnham College’s Alumni Development Office. Soprano Charlie Pemberton, a choral scholar at Newnham, and pianist Sarah MacDonald, Director of Music at Selwyn College, constructed a programme with a garden theme. The recording took place in Newnham’s Old Labs on 1st September.
Janet Wheeler’s song sets Khalil Gibran’s Said a Blade of Grass. Sarah’s song, The Garden in Spring, sets part of a poem by Fredegond Shove, a poet who attended Newnham during the 1910s. Fredegond Shove had two collections of poetry published during her lifetime; she was a relation of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who set four of her poems as songs. Unfortunately she is now very little known.
