Reaching Out to the Stars
celebrating the Centenary of the launch of the first liquid propelled rocket
Friday 4th December, 7pm
Hinde Street Methodist Church, London W1U 2QJ

Erika Baikoff – soprano
Jonathan Eyers – baritone
Nigel Foster – piano

The launch of the first liquid propelled rocket on 16th March 1926, though it only flew for 2.5 seconds and rose only 41 feet, was the start of the Space Age, and potentially opened the way for humans to reach the moon, the planets and, who knows, maybe ultimately the stars. Human beings have always reached for the stars, in our imaginations and in our dreams. After all, dreaming and imagining and fantasising are the things that make us human. This programme, devised by Nigel Foster, explores poets’ reactions to, and impressions of, the stars, the moon, and the sun, and how they effect human thought and human dreaming. We have songs by Clara and Robert Schumann, Schubert, Debussy, Reynaldo Hahn, Nadia Boulanger, Finzi, Holst, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and many more.

Erika Baikoff is a recent graduate of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. She is the winner of the 2019 Helmut Deutsch Liedwettbewerb and the 10th Concours international de chant-piano Nadia et Lili Boulanger, and has just been announced as a BBC New Generation Artist. In recital, Erika has sung for the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center amd both the Heidelberg Festival and Schubertíada. She has sung leading roles with the Bayerische Staatsoper, at the Theater an der Wien, with Houston Grand Opera and Palm Beach Opera.
Jonathan Eyers won the inaugural Rebecca Clarke Song Competition earlier this year. He is an Oxford Song Young Artist, a City Music Foundation Artist and a Britten-Pears Young Artist. He has sung roles for English National Opera and with the London Symphony Orchestra, and on BBC Radio 3.
Nigel Foster is the Director of the London Song Festival. His career as a collaborative pianist has taken him all over Europe, as well as in Asia (Japan, Malaysia), New Zealand and the Americas (USA, Colombia) as well as London’s Wigmore Hall, South Bank Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Room) and St John Smith Square. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM in the UK and on French, Welsh, and Greek television.