Name: William Drakett: Songs of Travel
Start: 2026-04-25T19:00:00+01:00
Location: Wells Cathedral, BA5 2UE Wells, United Kingdom

Join baritone William Drakett and pianist Benjamin Mead for an evening of song in the beautiful setting of Wells Cathedral‘s North Transept. At the heart of the programme is Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel, the beloved song cycle setting the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson. Charting the wanderings of a solitary traveller through the English countryside, these songs explore themes of freedom, longing, nature, and mortality.
Alongside Vaughan Williams’ masterpiece, the programme includes American Folk Song arrangements by contemporary American composer Steven Mark Kohn. Inspired by Copland‘s folk song settings, Kohn embarked on discovering lesser-known folk songs from the American tradition and arranged them combining classical, musical theatre, popular, and folk music styles. Kohn writes “What attracted me to these songs were the stories they told. They are mini-dramas. Something is happening in each one of them. Someone is traveling, working, or suffering. Their messages are universal to the human experience. They still resonate.”