Sir Richard Rodney Bennett and Thea Musgrave will be featured in a concert at the Spitalfields Festival on June 21. The concert will feature the London premiere of Musgrave's Lamenting with Ariadne with members of The Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Richard Baker. The programme will also include the world premiere of a new song cycle by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett. 'Songs before Sleep' was commissioned jointly by the BBC and the RPS for the New Zealand baritone Jonathan Lemalu, as part of their New Generation Artists scheme. It is a rich setting - verging on the sinister - of nursery rhymes. Musgrave and Bennett were born in the UK but both are now resident in the USA. Both have also received awards for services to music in the Queen's honours list: Bennett was Knighted in 1998 and Musgrave received a CBE in 2002.
