Recital with Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside (Leeds Song Festival)

Leeds Song favourite Roderick Williams is joined by former Artistic Director Iain Burnside to present a programme themed around Japanese haiku, featuring new works by Libby Larsen set to be premièred in 2026. Larsen’s delicate settings of haiku are interwoven with thematically related songs, old and new, creating a rich tapestry of musical and poetic connections. As Williams describes, the links between songs may be poetic, musical, contrasting, or sympathetic—encouraging free association. He likens Larsen’s short songs to a mobile, suspended around the central theme of displacement, from which other musical “threads” extend. Williams has selected additional songs from his repertoire to follow these threads, inviting listeners to form their own associations and connections, allowing the fragile beauty of the programme to evolve and expand.