PLEASE NOTE - THIS CONCERT WILL NOW TAKE PLACE ON FRIDAY 20TH MARCH 2026. REFUNDS WILL BE OFFERED TO EVERYONE WHO HAS BOUGHT TICKETS. OR IF PREFERRED, YOUR TICKETS WILL BE HELD OVER TO THE NEW DATE
Concert 4: Women Immigrants and Refugees in Britain - Friday 7th November, 7pm
Katy Thomson and Siân Dicker - 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.
Siân Dicker won the Singers Prize in the 2020 Royal Over-Seas League Competition as well as the Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform. She is a City Music Foundation Artist, a 2020/21 Britten Pears Young Artist and was listed in the BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Rising Stars’ feature in February 2023.
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.
The concert takes place at Hinde Street Methodist Church W1U 2QJ in the heart of London’s West End: the nearest tube station is Bond Street.
Please note that the London Song Festival does not issue paper tickets, as we love trees too much for that. The names of all ticket purchasers will be on a list at the door and will be admitted accordingly.
