The Portrait Choir, Pembroke Academy of Music Community Choir, The Choir With No Name, Gregory Batsleer

The National Portrait Gallery’s resident ensemble, The Portrait Choir, and its artistic director Gregory Batsleer, will be joined by the young singers (7-14 years) of south London’s Pembroke Academy of Music (PAM) Community Choir and homeless chorus, The Choir with No Name, for a promenade concert through the first floor galleries, where early 20th century portraits so relevant to this wartime period are on display.

Solo texts for this performance will be a combination of stories written by the children of the PAM choir and sourced texts from the National Portrait Gallery archives, making it another unique recital. The Portrait Choir will also sing Sir Hubert Parry’s elegiac Songs of Farewell (composed in the last years of his life and published 1916-18) and poet Jackie Kay will read her poem Private Joseph Kay (part of the Fierce Light poetry collection specially commissioned by 14-18 NOW, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Writers’ Centre Norwich).