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We offer daily services and a cultural programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate
Sunday 3 May 6pm
Soul at Saint James is a Gospel music service with the incredible, Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir.
Friday 15 May 7pm – 9pm
An open evening where the LGBTQIA+ community and allies can ask clergy honest questions about queer and trans identities in Christian faith.
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s is a place to explore, reflect, pray, and support all who are in need. We are a Church of England parish in the Anglican Communion.
We host a year-round creative programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word.
We offer hospitality to people going through homelessness and speak out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
St James’s strives to advocate for earth justice and to develop deeper connections with nature.
We aim to be a place where you can belong. We have a unique history, and the beauty of our building is widely known. Our community commits to faith in action: social and environmental justice; creativity. and the arts
We strive to be a Eucharist-centred, diverse and inclusive Christian community promoting life in abundance, wellbeing and dignity for all.
St James’s Piccadilly has been at the heart of its community since 1684. We invite you to play your part in securing this historic place for generations to come.
It costs £5,000 each day to keep the doors of St James’s open to all who already need us.
A reimagined St James’s realised. A redesigned garden, courtyard and new building capacity—all fully accessible— will provide beautiful spaces for all as well as improving our environmental performance.
Whether shooting a blockbuster TV series or creating a unique corporate event, every hire at St James’s helps our works within the community.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
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Friday 8 May 1.10pm
This afternoon’s programme brings together new pieces written by a selection of our first-year undergraduate composers at the Royal College of Music.
Online streaming
This concert will be streamed live on our YouTube channel at 1:10pm.
Support our Creative Programme
Whether £5 or any amount you’re able to give. Donations can be made in cash in the basket on your way out, or by tap donation at the machines at our exits. Your generosity helps support our cultural events and charitable services. Thank you.
Free admission | Donations welcome
Programme
Upon joining the RCM, first year composers are paired up with a student chamber group, developing a collaborative relationship during their time here in which they can explore and workshop compositional ideas together. The concert also includes a group improvisation, reflecting how important it is that our composers practice developing experience in performing and responding to a variety of notational practices.
Music for Dizi Percussion and Cello – Leo McCormack Astral Happenings (for clarinet, violin, cello and piano) – Alec Imamovic Hitohana Gokoro (String Quartet 1) – Aiden Rose Palimpsest (for String Quartet) – Constantin Raff
Artist Bio
Composers
Leo McCormack is a composer from the Midlands, based in London, studying at the Royal College of Music. Leo describes his compositions as being born of sound; fragments of recorded acoustic sonorities rearranged digitally to form textural edifices. Away from writing music, he is also an aspiring writer of words.
Constantin Raff is a composer whose work seeks to unite late 19th and early 20th century traditions with subtle innovation. His music preserves emotional immediacy while exploring new possibilities in texture, harmony, and timbre. He is currently in his first year studying composition at the Royal College of Music under Kenneth Hesketh.
Aiden Rose is a British composer and multi-instrumentalist who finds inspiration for his work in a range of literature, some he writes himself. He utilises a mix of jazz-inspired, contemporary and classical techniques and harmonic devices to encapsulate a moment, emotion or story in a vivid sonic description.
Alec Imamovic is a UK-based composer who seeks to create strong narratives through a blend of contemporary idioms and timeless traditional practices, in order to make contemporary music as accessible and relatable as possible to a wide audience.
Performers
The New Light Collective is a new music ensemble founded in 2025, comprised of performers and composers from London conservatoires. The ensemble is not restricted to a specific instrumentation but a mixture of voice, western instruments, and folk instruments such as dizi.
An expansion of the New Light Duo, which was founded in 2023, the New Light Collective aims to promote contemporary music and music from diverse cultural backgrounds, as well as commissioning and performing new works by promising young composers. The collective is on its mission to let modern and living composers be more accessible to the general public in varied ways, not limiting music only in concert halls.
Past performances include the collaboration with the Royal College of Music composition department, premiering six new works by six composers from the Royal College of Music written for dizi, harp, and cello at St James’s Piccadilly on 26th April, 2025, and another concert at St James’s Piccadily on 10th May, 2025, performing works by Claude Vivier, Luciano Berio, and two new compositions.
