COMPOSER Helen Porter comes to Shaftesbury’s St Peter’s Church on Saturday 19th September with her Calstock Big Jazz Choir for a performance of her major new work Small Wonders, a musical celebration of the consolation of nature.

Composed for choir, soloists and instrumentalists, Small Wonders had its premiere on the last night of this year’s Tavistock Music Festival and was a huge success, with audience and festival committee members saying it should reach a wider audience.

Helen started work on the piece while caring for her father, who died last year, and after one of her choir members and a close friend, Jennie Peach, died of cancer in 2024, at only 60. The piece is dedicated to her.

Now Small Wonders gets its second performance, with a line-up of performers including several from North Dorset.

Composer, singer, musician and music director Helen Porter is well-known to lovers of most musical genres in the North Dorset area. She first came to Shaftesbury more than 25 years ago as the animateur for Common Ground’s Confluence project, making new music to celebrate the river Stour from Stourhead to Christchurch harbour.

Helen’s role was to bring people together to sing, write and perform, and many of the groups she helped to create continue to delight and inspire local communities. For many years, she has lived in Cornwall with her husband, the Dutch-born artist and printmaker Peter Ursem. They run a variety of workshops and courses from their home near Calstock.

Helen is also half of a jazz duo with the Confluence composer Karen Wimhurst who still lives in Shaftesbury. Karen, who plays clarinet and bass clarinet as well as composing for a wide range of projects and organisations, plays in several groups, as well as conducting the Palida choir. She is one of the quartet performing in Small Wonders with Mark Smith, piano, Sam Norton, double bass, and Andy Turner, percussion.

Alongside the Calstock Big Jazz Choir, the soloists are soprano Brittany Soriano from Bournemouth, tenor Richard Court from Exeter, and bass Ed Bersey from Semley.

Set in the first year of the pandemic, Small Wonders takes the audience on a song journey through the seasons with our senses more keenly tuned to the sights and sounds of nature. We are drawn into the lives of some of the smallest creatures who live in our shared environment, exploring our need to create stories and myths around them to bring us consolation in difficult times.

The songs, an eclectic mix of genres – classical, musical theatre, jazz, folk, cabaret and contemporary – reflect the marvellous diversity of the natural world. Small Wonders is a journey of hope, a reminder of our responsibilities as shared inhabitants of the earth and the power of music, song and nature to lift our spirits in dark times.

Small Wonders is at St Peter’s Church, Shaftesbury, at 7.30pm on 19th September.