Leeds Song festival review – from haiku to hauntings in evening that thinks outside the box

Various venues, LeedsRoderick Williams could breathe life into a telephone directory, but found much better material in his recital with Iain Burnside. A later concert featured atmospheric soundscapes from local composer Martin Iddon Leeds’s top-tier celebration of the vocal arts continues to push the envelope. Two vastly different concerts were typical of director Joseph Middleton’s determination to think outside the box while honouring the festival’s roots in the traditional recital. Haiku, which premiered last year in Minnesota, sprang from the fertile brains of baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Iain Burnside. The roughly 90-minute programme revolved around eight poems taken from a collection of haiku written by Japanese Americans interned during the second world war. Libby Larsen’s settings – sung in both English and Japanese and collectively entitled Mobile/Not Mobile/ … – are distilled musical morsels, stuffed with imagination, exploring themes of exile, detention and deportation. Interwoven with these lively miniatures was a variety of complementary songs drawn from Williams’ extensive repertory. Internal echoes and modern resonances threaded their way t