BBC Singers 2026-27 SPRACHLOS | Azrieli Music Prizes in Concert

48 singers, four double basses, an array of percussion and some of the most compelling voices in contemporary music: at Basel’s Martinskirche, the BBC Singers, Basler Madrigalisten and Klangforum Wien come together for two extraordinary large-scale choir concerts – an evening of monumental sound worlds, lost languages, and the world premiere of a new work by Georg Friedrich Haas, alongside four works honoured with the Azrieli Music Prize (AMP), one of the world’s most prestigious composition competitions, created by Sharon Azrieli CQ for the Azrieli Foundation.​

The second concert, once again conducted by Benjamin Goodson, Chief Conductor Designate of the SWR Vokalensemble, brings together three further works from the 2024 Azrieli Music Prizes, each opening a window onto a different musical and cultural world. In Light to My Path, Josef Bardanashvili draws on his Georgian roots and texts from the Psalms, moving between doubt, ecstasy and gratitude. Jordan Nobles’s kanata unfolds through slowly shifting sonorities into a meditation on landscape, belonging and home. In Simetrías Prehispánicas, Juan Trigos turns to pre-Hispanic Mexico, bringing together Spanish and historical Nahuatl texts. The second concert opens with a short address by Sharon Azrieli CQ.

In different ways, the works of the evening engage with languages, cultural traditions and forms of transmission that disappear, evolve or are rediscovered – from Judeo-Arabic and Nahuatl to musical reflections on home, belonging and cultural memory.

Recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Sounds.