Introducing... Kerensa Briggs: Requiem
First performed by the BBC Singers on Armistice Day 2022, Kerensa Briggs’ Requiem is a heartfelt and poignant setting of nine sections from the Office for the Dead. This moving 35-minute work for mezzo-soprano soloist, mixed chorus, and organ highlights the composer's appreciation of the connection between music and faith.
Vocal score publishing on 13 November 2024
‘Requiem’ is recorded on Delphian Records by Joseph Fort and The Choir of King’s College London, with organist Richard Gowers. The BBC Music Magazine praises the album, noting that "The Requiem is a substantial statement, Briggs, bringing her own colours to the gently assuaging tradition of Duruflé and Faure ... Eschewing the customary angelic treble, a mezzo-soprano soloist, the beguiling Anita Monserrat here, acts as advocate, from the rousing opening call of ‘Requiem aeternam’ to its more accepting recall at the close, via arabesques and curlicues periodically burnishing the choral textures in between. Organ provides the only accompaniment, its generally restrained contributions sensitively handled by Richard Gowers ... the Choir of King’s College London under the assured direction of Joseph Fort are strong advocates for Briggs’s alluring and heartfelt music".
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Kerensa Briggs is an award-winning composer specialising in choral music. Described as “poignant, ambivalent, quietly devastating music” in the New York Times, her works have been performed internationally at venues including St Paul’s Cathedral and the Sistine Chapel. Her music is regularly performed or broadcast with groups such as Voces 8 and The Sixteen. Her portrait disc Requiem (2023) on Delphian Records placed in the top 30 classical charts and was described as “alluring and heartfelt music” by BBC music magazine. Kerensa was winner of the National Centre for Early Music Young Composers Award 2014 and is an alumni of the TheoArtistry Composers scheme at St Andrews’ Institute for Theology and the Arts. She is currently Composer in Residence for St Louis Chamber Chorus. Her love of choral music emanates from her choral background, singing in choirs including Gloucester Cathedral Youth and the choir of King’s College London, where she held a Choral Scholarship and undertook an MMus in Composition.
