New classical music written by John Paul Jones will be performed for the first time in London on January 8, it has been announced.
A new song cycle written by Jones for opera performer Dame Sarah Connolly will have its premiere at London’s Wigmore Hall, according to an announcement published by Britten Sinfonia and a listing on Dame Sarah’s management firm’s website.
“As part of Britten Sinfonia’s commitment to championing new music, the season also features the world premiere of a new song cycle by rock legend John Paul Jones, written for Dame Sarah Connolly and ensemble, and premiered at Wigmore Hall (8 January 2026),” Britten Sinfonia’s announcement reads.
A schedule for the 2025/2026 season published by Wigmore Hall shows that the January 8 performance will include Dame Sarah, classical pianist Joseph Middleton and the Britten Sinfonia.
The January premiere date for the song cycle is later than a planned October premiere which LedZepNews previously revealed.
The history between John Paul Jones and Dame Sarah Connolly
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.
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.”
In an interview with Steinway published in July 2024, Jones revealed that the song cycle was based on poems he had selected.
“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.”
“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.
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