2020 Festival Artists

Jessica Duchen

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United Kingdom

At first I was torn between music and writing. Then I realised the trick is to combine them…I was classical music correspondent for The Independent from 2004 to 2016, and have also written for The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, BBC Music Magazine and others. My librettos for opera and choral works include 'Silver Birch' for composer Roxanna Panufnik, commissioned by Garsington Opera and shortlisted for an International Opera Award in 2018. Projects for 2020 include a choral piece with Roxanna, 'Ever Us', commissioned by the Rundfunkchor Berlin and nine visiting choirs, celebrating the Beethoven 250th anniversary; the premiere from the Berlin Philharmonie is on national TV.

Speaking of Beethoven, I am currently working on a novel, 'Immortal', which complements the programme 'Immortal Beloved' I'm presenting at AFCM. Among my other books, 'Ghost Variations' (2016) is based on the true story of the Schumann Violin Concerto’s rediscovery in the 1930s – involving ‘spirit messages’, Nazis and a true-life cast of celebrated musicians.

I often narrate concert versions of my novels. Ghost Variations (“highly moving” – Birmingham Post) launched in 2017-18: violinist David Le Page, pianist Viv McLean and I have taken it to the Leicester International Music Festival, Kensington & Chelsea Music Society, Barnes Music Society, Burgh House Hampstead, Artrex Bromsgrove, St Mary’s Perivale and Live at Zédel. It featured on London Live TV and BBC Radio 3’s In Tune. Several other novel-concerts - Odette- A Celebration of Tchaikovsky, Hungarian Dances, and Alicia’s Gift (about a child prodigy pianist) - have been presented at such venues as the Wigmore Hall, the Buxton Festival, the Kensington & Chelsea Music Society and the Chopin Society, London, among others. (We’re open for bookings - for these and future shows!)

For the AFCM, in 2018 artistic director Kathryn Stott commissioned me to write and narrate a words&music show about Anna Magdalena Bach. It featured festival musicians including Roderick Williams, Siobhan Stagg, Guy Johnston and the Goldner String Quartet. “Being Mrs Bach was a beautifully crafted retelling of the ‘Bach’ story with a lot of heart” (Limelight Magazine).

My first books were biographies of the composers Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Gabriel Fauré - both composers are long-standing passions and I go back to them time and again.

My play, A Walk Through the End of Time, introducing Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, was commissioned by violinist Philippe Graffin for the Consonances Festival, Saint-Nazaire, in 2007. Sins of the Fathers, about Wagner, Liszt and Cosima, was commissioned by the International Wimbledon Music Festival in 2013, and presented at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, starring John Sessions, Jeremy Child and Sarah Gabriel. Both plays have been staged at AFCM

I was born within the sound of Bow Bells, studied music at Cambridge and live in London with my husband and two cats. I love theatre, playing the piano, cookery, long walks and deliciously obscure books about music.