Concert 4: Women Immigrants and Refugees in Britain - Friday 7th November, 7pm
Katy Thomson - soprano
Lily Mo Browne - mezzo-soprano
Nigel Foster - piano
Rekha John-Cheriyan - speaker

This concert is a tribute to the women who have come to this country as immigrants and refugees since 1945, and an acknowledgement of the huge contribution they have made and continue to make to British life. Some of their stories are told in their own words, read by Rekha John-Cheriyan, and these stories are illustrated by songs, all settings of poems written by women, by H Leslie Adams, Ernest Bloch, Elgar, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Libby Larsen, Lori Laitman, Wagner, Rachmaninov, Charles Ives, Jake Heggie, Lee Hoiby, Shirley Thompson and Raymond Yiu.

Katy Thomson was was a Britten Pears Young Artist (2021-2022), a Garsington Opera Alvarez Young Artist (2021 & 2022) and an Oxford Song Young Artist (2022-2023). She has sung roles with English National Opera, Scottish Opera.
Lily Mo Browne won the 2025 Kathleen Ferrier Award and is a 2025 Verbier Festival Young Artist. Her other competition successes include the Somerset Song Prize (both the main prize and the Audience Prize, and the AESS National English Song Competition.
Nigel Foster has performed at Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Crush Bar) and across Europe as well as in North and South America, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand, playing for singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence, Nadine Benjamin, Kate Royal, Lotte Betts-Dean, James Gilchrist, Julien Van Mellaerts, Ashley Riches, Simon Wallfisch, Louise Winter, and Elizabeth Llewellyn.
Rekha John-Cheriyan’s credits include Sheeba in Hollyoaks, Sabita in Casualty (BBC1), Maggie in the West End run and international tour of Soldier On and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mrs Abbas in the feature film Polite Society.