Paul Jackson

New Palace Opera: Káťa Kabanová
2026-07-19 18:30 - 21:00 UTC | St John’s Church, Waterloo, London, SE1 8TY
New Palace Opera, conducted by Michael Thorne, present a concert performance of Leoš Janáček’s opera, Káťa Kabanová.

This story of one woman’s bid for escape from her suffocating community reflects the composer’s unrequited love for a woman resembling Katya herself. Janáček once wrote, “Katya’s suffering is my own,” bringing forth from the Czech composer a work of lacerating intensity, compelling tension and wondrous lyricism.

This concert performance will be sung in English, with translation by Norman Tucker.

www.newpalaceopera.com/katya-kabanova

Saffron Opera Group: Dialogues des Carmélites
2026-09-13 14:30 - 17:00 | Saffron Hall, Audley End Road, Saffron Walden, CB11 4UH
Saffron Opera Group, conducted by Michael Thorne, perform a concert version of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.

Public Talk: Reconstructing Grainger the Educator
2026-09-24 18:00 - 19:00 | Grainger Museum, Grattan Street, Parkville, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Join us for the next talk in our music research series, with President of the Percy Grainger Society, Paul Jackson. The Museum will be open from 5:30 pm, with the talk starting at 6:00 pm. Bookings encouraged; drop-ins welcome.

Percy Grainger spent a significant part of his professional life teaching and educating, an aspect of his multi-faceted make-up that has received relatively little critical attention to date. Aside from the lecture recitals that ran through much of his performing career, he enjoyed a highly lucrative period of engagement as piano teacher with the Chicago Music School between 1919 and 1931, and as teacher, performer and conductor at the Interlochen Music Camps, Michigan, between 1937 and 1944. But it is in his public lecture series “A General Study of the Manifold Nature of Music,” delivered at New York University between 1932 and 1933, and “Music: A Commonsense View of all Types”, delivered for the Australian Broadcasting Commission between 1934 and 1935, that Grainger came closest to formalising his world-view of music in a manner intended to provide a framework for broader understanding and engagement, and, ultimately, enlightenment.

In these lecture series, Grainger pursued a form of comparative musical analysis that sought to reveal “the threads of unity” that ran through music from different genres, traditions and periods. Grainger selected a very wide range of apparently disparate music to illustrate his points, drawing on sources that included newly-available recordings from the ethnographic collections of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, as well as a host of invited performers. Such musical examples served as a means of demonstrating that disparate cultural phenomena shared correspondences of technical means of realisation, and of aesthetic and emotional values. Grainger’s analyses are, by turns, precise and scientific, and meandering and misguided, but are centred around the notion that “the highest flights of music are a spiritualizing influence inducing contemplation and rapture and leading mankind toward a more peaceful, harmonious and angelic life (on earth)’.

In this talk, I provide a framework for better understanding the core ideas expounded in Grainger’s lecture series, placing them within the context of the then-emerging field of ethnomusicology and of parallel attempts of formalised music education that sought to make the world’s music available to the wider public. A key method of illustrating Grainger’s central ideas is the reconstruction of the musical content of selected lectures—drawn from a range of archival sources—which naturally serves to illustrate his central beliefs more vividly and tellingly than by a consideration of his written words alone.

St Augustine's Singers: St Cecilia Mass
2026-11-07 18:00 - 19:00 | St Augustine’s Church, Richmond Road, Cambridge
The St Augustine’s Singers, conducted by Paul Jackson, present their autumn concert, featuring Charles Gounod’s lyrical Messe solennelle en l’honneur de Sainte-Cécile, the ‘St Cecilia Mass’, in the version for chorus, soloists and organ.

Haslingfield Choir and Orchestra: St Cecilia Mass
2026-12-05 19:30 - 21:30 | All Saints’ Church, Church Way, Haslingfield, CB23 1JF
Haslingfield Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Paul Jackson, perform Charles Gounod’s lyrical Messe solennelle en l’honneur de Sainte-Cécile, the ‘St Cecilia Mass’. The concert also includes Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, and the first set of Joseph Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne.

St Augustine's Singers: Christmas Concert
2026-12-12 13:00 - 14:00 | Michaelhouse Centre, Trinity Street, Cambridge
Christmas music, carols and solos by the St Augustine’s Singers, conducted by Paul Jackson, at Cambridge’s Michaelhouse Centre.

Newtown Ensemble: Concert Champêtre
2027-01-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Stockbridge Parish Church, 7b Saxe Coburg Street, Edinburgh, EH3 5BN, United Kingdom
The Newtown Ensemble, conducted by Michael Thorne, performs Francis Poulenc’s delightful Concert Champêtre, with Paul Jackson as piano soloist. Also included in the concert are Symphony No 2 by Ruth Gipps, and Holst’s Suite de Ballet.

Haslingfield Choir and Orchestra: Spring Concert
2027-03-20 19:30 - 21:30 | All Saints’ Church, Church Way, Haslingfield, CB23 1JF
Haslingfield Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Paul Jackson, present their spring concert.
