John Paul Jones’ next solo project is a song cycle he is writing for opera singer Dame Sarah Connolly that will be performed in 2025.

The songs are based on poems Jones has selected, he revealed in a podcast interview with piano manufacturer Steinway that was released in July after being recorded at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee in March.

“I’ve got four poems from some Americans poets and some British poets,” Jones said in the podcast episode. “You’ve searched for these poems, that’s the hardest part, finding the poem that fits. They have to be related to each other slightly, these poems. And they are, there is a common theme which again I won’t reveal just yet.”

Jones confirmed in the interview that his project has a name but declined to share it, explaining that “it might give it away”.

During the podcast episode, host Ben Finane mentioned the song cycle will be performed in 2025.

“It’s a song cycle for Dame Sarah Connolly, who is one of the finest mezzo-sopranos in the world,” Jones said. “It’s for a Pierrot ensemble. It’s the Pierrot ensemble, which is Pierrot lunaire orchestration which is piano, flute, clarinet, violin and cello. So it’s classical Pierrot ensemble.”

“The people who commissioned it said ‘You can add instruments’. I thought maybe I could add another violin which would give me a string trio. Then that makes it a bit too easy,” Jones explained.

“The clarinet can double bass clarinet, which is what I’ve got them doing, and the flute can double piccolo. And so you’ve really got quite a good range there,” he added.

The first public mention of a collaboration between Jones and Dame Sarah came in 2018 when The Telegraph reported that the pair were working together on new songs as well as Jones’ Ghost Sonata musical.

“You might be surprised to know that I’ve been a Led Zeppelin fan since my youth,” Dame Sarah said in the interview. “They’ve written some really fantastic music, so inventive and passionate. John Paul is a really gifted composer, and I can’t wait to hear what he has come up with.”

The next sign that the pair were working together came when the Twitter account @JohnPaulJones, which seems to be the man himself, followed Dame Sarah’s Twitter account last year. 

And when Jones was announced in 2023 as a performer at the 2024 Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, his biography on the festival website included the following section: “John is currently composing a song cycle for Dame Sarah Connolly which has been commissioned by a number of the finest, as yet unannounced, contemporary classical music venues and ensembles in the world.”

Elsewhere in the interview with Steinway, Jones mentioned his Steinway piano which he recalls was played on stage during Led Zeppelin’s five Earls Court shows in 1975 (although he seemed a bit confused about the date of those shows).

“I have my Steinway. I think I bought it in 1970,” Jones said. “It was very interesting because we went to Steinway in London and I saw one of the old books, one of the old ledgers. Although the sale of that particular Steinway, it’s a 1898 B perhaps. They looked up the serial number, I had it completely refurbished in 1973.”

“In fact, what I did, I lived out in Sussex at the time, south of London,” he continued. “We were playing five nights at Earls Court arena with [Led] Zeppelin. I thought ‘This is my chance’. And so I had my Steinway at Earls Court for those five shows and then it went straight into Steinways in London for complete restring and everything like that. So that’s my Steinway on stage in the Earls Court shows and I’ve just loved it ever, ever since.”