Jerwood Song Cycle by Alex Ho

Join us in the Organ Room for a performance of An English Country House, a new work written by the Balancing the Score composer Alex Ho.

The piece will be performed by soprano Biqing Zhang – currently covering the role of Naiad in Ariadne auf Naxos for Festival 2026 and performing in the chorus for the Autumn Season 2026 – accompanied by pianist Ben-San Lau.

Dates and Times

Saturday 15 August, 2.45pm–3.15pm
Thursday 20 August, 2.45pm–3.15pm
Saturday 22 August, 2.45pm–3.15pm

This event is unticketed and available to Festival 2026 ticket holders for the dates above. No need to book, just drop by at the performance start time.

Dramaturg Pamela Carter’s text is loosely based on the nineteenth century short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Structured into five songs and a wordless epilogue, we follow the story of a woman visiting the estate of an English country house steeped in imperial history and wealth. She finds herself in the Ladies’ Drawing Room decorated with a wallpaper in a chinoiserie style. To her horror, she notices a figure emerge from the wallpaper. Perhaps not everything is as it seems…

Pamela’s representation of an English country house invites a questioning of our present-day institutions. As such, Alex Ho plays with ideas of orientalism through the lens of this story, exploring its ornamental aesthetic, its decorative sound and its fragile timbre as an ode to Britain’s lack of acknowledgement of its dark past.