Concert Diary For a list of forthcoming and recent performances, click here.
Selected performers
Selected performance venues |
The Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank was the venue for the Women Composers Festival concert on 9 July 2022, featuring the London Oriana Choir performing These things shall be, the anthem whose premiere in 2017 began the revival of interest in Ailsa's music. 
The Italianate church of St Mary and St Nicholas at Wilton near Salisbury was the venue for the concert premiere of Ailsa's Variations on Love Divine for string quartet, given by the Villiers Quartet in April 2022. 
The Italian chapel in Orkney was the venue for a recording of Psalm 122, I was glad, from the Songs of Faith and Joy, sung by mezzo soprano Lotte Betts Dean with guitarist Michael Butten, to be aired from 18 June 2021 as part of the Land, Sea and Sky series in the St Magnus International Festival. 
An Advent Sequence from the Variations on Love Divine was performed by the Illuminate String Quartet in the chapel of University College Oxford, as part of the college's celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the first admission of women. 
These things shall be was performed again by the London Oriana Choir (who gave the premiere in 2017) as part of their summer concert in Stationer's Hall in London on 30th June 2019. 
Airs of the Seasons, Ailsa's sonata for piano duet (4 hands), was premiered at St George's Bristol in their lunchtime concert series, on 8th November 2018, played by Joseph Tong and Waka Hasegawa - click here for a review. The Spirit of Love, 3 songs for soprano and string quartet, was premiered at St George's Bristol on 20th February 2020, by Lucinda Cox and the Villiers Quartet. Ailsa was born in Bristol, where there was a concert of remembrance featuring her anthem These things shall be in November 2017. 
These things shall be was sung by Sansara in Romsey Abbey on 20th October 2018, as part of the St Ethelflaeda Festival. |
These things shall be was premiered by the London Oriana Choir at the Cutty Sark on 5 July 2017, as part of the Five15 project giving a voice to women composers across the UK.
After Ailsa's death it was sung again in concerts of remembrance in London and Bristol in November 2017.
Songs of Faith and Joy, setting five Biblical texts for voice and guitar, were first performed by the composer and her husband, guitarist Brian Dixon, at Pallant House, Chichester in 1988.
Rob Farrow
Several of Ailsa’s works (including Shining Cold and Two Shakespeare Sonnets) were performed at the Little Missenden Festival, in the frescoed church of St John the Baptist. Performers included Ian Partridge, Lynne Dawson, Cynthia Millar and the Brindisi Quartet.
Sansara sang Ailsa's anthem These things shall be at the Festival in 2018.
Motacilla
Letter to Philemon, a two-act opera about an episode in the life of St Paul, was first performed in Aston Rowant church in 1984.
