Edward Edwards House Christmas Concert
Melanie Pappenheim and Sarah Angliss
December 2022
To mark the last Christmas in the old Edward Edwards House we held a concert devised and performed by singer Melanie Pappenheim and composer Sarah Angliss. The artists spoke with residents about musical memories of their lives in Southwark to inform a programme featuring carols, folksongs and old-time favourites. The evening began with a magical acoustic set in the lamplit courtyard garden of the almshouse before we processed to Christchurch Southwark for the concert.
Melanie Pappenheim & Esme Herbert: Vocals
Sarah Angliss: keyboard, percussion, and the saw
Stephen Hiscock Percussion
Steven Bentley-Klein: strings and trumpet
Shamus Darke: Jazz Singer
With thanks to Christ Church Southwark
Melanie Pappenheim is a singer, performer and composer. She has toured nationally and internationally with many leading UK experimental theatre and dance companies including Lumiere & Son, DV8 Physical Theatre and Clod Ensemble. She has appeared regularly at the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, The Young Vic, The Royal Opera House, The ENO and Glyndebourne. Melanie has also collaborated with many renowned contemporary composers, such as Jocelyn Pook, Orlando Gough, Gavin Bryars, Graham Fitkin and Sarah Angliss. She has premiered dozens of new works for solo voice including the award-winning opera A Ring A Lamp A Thing by Caryl Churchill and Orlando Gough. Melanie appeared as Queen Elizabeth I in Dr Dee by Damon Albarn and Rufus Norris commissioned by Manchester International Festival and most recently in Giant, a new opera composed by Sarah Angliss performed at Snape Maltings in 2023 and at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre in 2024. Other recent highlights include a European tour with Brian Eno and the Baltic Sea Orchestra in October 2023 and a sound installation by Orlando Gough at Messums Art Gallery, Wiltshire featuring a recording of Melanie’s voice.
Her voice has been featured on many film soundtrack recordings including Derek Jarman’s Edward II and The Garden. The House of Mirth by Terence Davies and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. She has sung on several episodes of Doctor Who, appearing in the first Doctor Who Prom in 2009 and most recently her voice has featured on several episodes of The Crown.
Melanie has composed music for several BBC Radio 4 dramas and has received several commissions for art installations and site-specific projects. Since 2015, she has worked with the arts-in-health charity Rosetta Life, co-developing a program of work involving theatre and music for people who have experienced stroke.
Sarah Angliss is an Ivor Novello Award winning composer and sound designer, creating new music and soundworlds for film, theatre, opera, dance, installations and her own live performances. Sarah’s music explores the sonorities of voices and instruments, revealing and augmenting them with her distinctive and finely wrought bespoke electronic techniques. Sarah’s score for Eugene O’Neill’s Expressionist masterpiece The Hairy Ape (directed by Richard Jones) featured at The Old Vic, London, and Park Avenue Armory, New York. Her film score for Romola Garai’s horror Amulet premiered at Sundance 2020. In summer 2023, her widely acclaimed debut opera Giant opened Aldeburgh Festival (librettist Ross Sutherland, directed by Sarah Fahie). Giants transferred to the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, in March 2024. In demand as a live performer, Sarah tours widely. She’s appeared at The Royal Festival Hall, Union Chapel, Arnolfini, LSO St Luke’s, Star and Shadow, BBC Halls Swansea, Supernormal and Supersonic UK; Prima Vista, Estonia; National Sawdust, Brooklyn, and many other festivals and venues. She’s been a recipient of the Ivor Novello Award (category: Visionary Award) and a Paul Hamlyn Award for Composers.
Sarah is also a published historian of sound culture and often uses primary archival sources to inform her work. She draws on this research to create forward thinking sound and music that resonates with the themes and era of any production. With a deep interest in psychoacoustics and its use in music, she’s widely known for her work exploring the ‘haunting’ psychological effects of infrasound.