Song written in a Leigh bedroom to be performed by 24-piece orchestra and 70-voice choir
A song, written by Joseph Abayomi in a rented room in Leigh, will be performed by a 24-piece orchestra and a choir of 70 singers recruited from church congregations across the region.
A worship song recorded alone on a laptop in a rented room in Leigh is to be performed by a full orchestra, it is believed to be the first time that a worship song in the Yoruba African language has been staged as a full orchestral work in England.
Joseph Abayomi, 27, who lives in Atherton and works as a software quality engineer, wrote Adùn Òtun (Yoruba for "a new sweetness") in 2023, playing every part himself.
Now, in Victoria Hall in Bolton on Saturday February 27, 2027 the piece will be performed by a 24-piece orchestra and a choir of 70.
Untold Orchestra, a Manchester ensemble, is contracted for the concert and the performance will feature a choir of seventy singers recruited from church congregations across Leigh, Bolton, Wigan, Atherton and Manchester. For most of them, it will be the first time they have ever sung with an orchestra.
Joseph said: "I wrote it in a room in Leigh with headphones on, and I never expected anyone else to sing it. The strange part now is that there is going to be a bassoon part and there are going to be five first violins.”
Alongside the concert, the evening includes a short staged play, The Fourth Spring, written by Moyo J. Bassey. It is a story about a husband and wife who wait years for a child and the orchestration is by the composer Gabriel Adedeji.
Joseph has filmed and published via social media each day of the project since September 8, from venue viewings and rejections to a 3am funding application.
The footage will then become a documentary about the whole process from the initial idea to the finished performance.
Joseph said "Most of the choir have never sung with an orchestra in their lives. Neither had I, until this. That is the whole point of it, it is not a professional company coming into Bolton to perform at people. It is people from these towns, singing something from their own tradition, at a scale that tradition does not usually get."
Yoruba is a major West African Niger-Congo language spoken by roughly 50 million people, primarily in southwestern Nigeria, Benin, and Togo.
Tickets are on sale now, with early-bird tickets starting at £22 until November 23.