Next week, Minerva Voices presents a summer evening performance set amidst the historic grounds of Canterbury’s eleventh-century castle, on Tuesday 24 May.

The castle is amongst Britain’s most ancient, begun around 1070 to replace a motte-and-bailey construction built as one of several fortifications protecting the Roman road from Dover to London. The keep and surrounding walls are all that remain, and the site surfaces like a blunt reminder of Canterbury’s military history.

As the sun sets, the ancient flint and sandstone walls of the surviving keep will ring to the upper-voice chamber choir’s colourful programme, which includes medieval plainsong, a contemporary Norwegian folksong, Veljo Tormis’ filigree Spring Sketches, Bob Chilcott’s scintillating Song of the Stars, and pieces by Mozart, Holst and Gounod. The concert will conclude with a dramatic Norwegian telling of the Song of Roland, for which the choir will be joined by percussionist Cory Adams.

Admission is free; the concert starts at 7.30pm, and is with the kind permission of Canterbury City Council. Please note that there is no seating at the site, so you might like to bring a blanket or folding-chair; the performance will last approximately fifty minutes. Join Minerva Voices as the sun sets over the historic site for a musical odyssey across the centuries.