by Oli

It has been a daunting but also beautiful process bringing this concert to life with Polyphony. As we’ve met together each week, we’ve collectively confronted and persisted through each song’s unique musical and emotional challenges. As corny as it may sound, singing together has been healing. Truly, the resilience of the Polyphony community carries on Jack’s legacy with the choir: his passion, his drive, and his enthusiasm.

During the 2021 lockdown, Jack and I lived just close enough to form a singles bubble. We’d meet up every Wednesday, go for a walk, eat fish and chips, and do something creative—Lego, designing hats or t-shirts—while we listened to records. We’d also play piano together, working through four-hand arrangements of orchestral pieces, or making our own versions of pop songs. Alongside Ravel, Saint-Saëns, and The Veronicas, we arranged and filmed ourselves playing Kylie Minogue’s ‘Come Into My World’.

Michel Gondry’s music video for ‘Come Into My World’ shows a Parisian street scene tracked in a constant circle, with multiple Kylies entering and looping through small, everyday tasks. There is nothing particularly dramatic in the action, but something in the repetition—tiny shifts, glances, overlaps—becomes quietly transcendent. It sparkles with a cumulative kind of joy.

That image stayed with me as we rehearsed for this concert: the power of returning to the same material again and again, not just to perfect it, but to live inside it. The songs Jack chose aren’t unified by genre, but by their structures: patterns that emerge, loop, stretch, and contract. Whether it’s a background ostinato, a repeating lyric, or a recurring harmonic turn, these musical gestures create both comfort and surprise.

Each Wednesday, rehearsing these songs has felt like tending to seedlings—patiently returning, week after week, as they take shape and bloom. There’s a quiet magic in that process. The ritual of rehearsal—the way we pull songs apart and piece them back together—goes beyond preparing for performance. It’s about delighting in imperfections, and connecting to the heart of the music we make.

We present this concert for ourselves, our loved ones, and our community. It offers a glimpse into our world, one that keeps spinning, with so much changed and so much still the same. In it, we continue a joyful practice—one Jack deeply believed in. I’m proud to help bring his final program to life.