COMPOSER Liz Johnson’s new work Colwall Requiem for Aleppo, a community project that involves musicians young and old, is being performed for the first time in the village next month,

The work is a setting of the requiem mass with some additional movements taken from the Psalms and other religious texts, encompassing a range of influences such as the original requiem chants, English folk music, English and French choral traditions, gospel and contemporary choral music.

Liz Johnson is an award-winning composer who teaches composition at Birmingham Conservatoire. She has worked with and written for notable musicians such as Roderick Williams, the Fitzwilliam and the Brodsky quartets and Ex Cathedra Choir and her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio Three.

She said: "Living as I do in the rural beauty and comfort of Colwall, I was struck by the strong contrast between my life here, nestled in the foothills of the Malvern Hills, and the lives of those caught up in the destruction of a city.”

The performance is on Sunday, April 2, at St James Church, Colwall at 4pm.

The music will be performed by Colwall Church Choir, Colwall Primary School Choir and young musicians from John Masefield High School in Ledbury and St Mary’s RC High School in Hereford.

The solo singers are Giselle Pearson, Lynn Lee, Henry Pyne and Ben Cooper with Adam Römer on viola, Sue Humphrey on piano and Philip Holland on organ. The conductor is Peter Johnson.

There is no charge for the concert but there will be a retiring collection for refugees. There is ample free parking at the church.