The Foundling Hospital, established in 1739, was based in Coram Fields until the 1920s and many thousands of ‘abandoned’ children grew up in its care. It attracted artists and musicians as patrons, including George Frideric Handel, who staged many benefit concerts there, one of which featured his Foundling Hospital Anthem.

Harvey Brough was inspired to write his own anthem, A Particulare Care, after visiting the Foundling Museum and reading a note left in 1758 by Florella Burney’s mother which read, ‘Pray let particulare care be taken of this child, as it will be called for again’. This work asks how there can be such poverty ‘in a rich and fruitful land’.

A Fairy Dream was composed in 2009. Harvey interspersed movements from Purcell’s 1692 masque, The Fairy Queen, with new compositions for children in a work that continues to explore the themes of loss and hope – with an added touch of fairy magic.

A Particulare Care was first performed by Vox Holloway in 2012. It is even more relevant today, with poverty and social inequality affecting so many children and families. Refugee families are amongst the most desperate. This concert will raise funds for the work of Safe Passage, an organisation that champions the rights of refugees and displaced people, including child refugees, who are particularly vulnerable.

Vox Holloway, under it’s Director, Harvey Brough, regularly commissions and performs new work, often with a social message. St James’ Church Piccadilly is renowned for its strong commitment both to the arts and to social justice. Soloists: Eloise Irving, Christina Gill, Wills Morgan and Maurice Wren with a Baroque orchestra led by Peter Hanson.