A highlight of First Light, Dawn is an extraordinary, reflective experience, unique to the festival.
Gather by the water’s edge as the first sunlight creeps over the horizon for a programme of newly commissioned performance, music and feasting that mark the shifting of seasons. Come together with friends old and new and become an official member of the Sunrise Club: a special group that assembles once a year but creates memories that last a lifetime.
03:45 Nic Pendlebury performs Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector
“My version of Riley’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector employs digital delay and explores the repetition of musical patterns which accumulate and dissipate, forming accompanying motives or repeating melodic motives which eventually disappear. Much of each performance is left to improvisation, so no two performances are alike.”
Nic has been at the forefront of the contemporary music scene for over thirty years and is the founder and violist of the Internationally acclaimed Smith Quartet. In more recent years Nic’s pioneering and creative spirit has seen him create a new repertoire for the electric viola an instrument he believes has an exciting future in the ever developing world of classical music.
Nic’s performance is part of the wider Beyond Our World programme, played across the festival weekend with Trinity Laban Ensemble.
04:10 Temporarily Forever: Hannah Rudd & Kerenza Peacock
To celebrate sunrise we welcome two of the UK’s shining stars of dance and music both hailing from Suffolk: dancer Hannah Rudd and musician Kerenza Peacock. Taking Lowestoft and midsummer as their inspiration Hannah and Kerenza will perform Temporarily Forever, a newly commissioned piece made for performing on the beach that celebrates dawn and the solstice weekend.
This new work will be created in partnership with DanceEast.
Hannah Rudd was born and grew up in Ipswich. Her love of dancing as a young girl saw her appearing in the Co-Op Juniors productions and joining Linda Shipton’s School of Dancing. Since training at The Royal Ballet School, she has danced with The Michael Clark company, Scottish Ballet, Rambert Dance Company and Birmingham Royal Ballet. Hannah works regularly with Fallen Angels Dance Theatre, and Outside edge Theatre, companies that specialise in dance and theatre as means of healing and transformation, for those who are recovering from addiction and mental health challenges.
Ipswich-born Kerenza Peacock has recorded as soloist with the Royal Philharmonic and London
Symphony Orchestras, and also recorded with Harry Styles, Barbra Streisand and Adele. Equally at home playing bluegrass or Beethoven, Kerenza has recorded for film and TV including soundtracks of Downton Abbey, Encanto and Avatar. She will be First Light Festival 2023’s Musician in Residence playing across the weekend in The Coal Porters and with John and Lynne Ward, and will be in conversation with Veronica Sekules as part of From The Ground Up.
04:45 Join our free sunrise feast, accompanied by Pearl in the Egg and Alexander Costello’s participatory new piece, Jumping Over the Sun
For a surreal and participatory end to Dawn, Lowestoft-based sculptor, performance and video artist Alexander Costello invites us to jump over the rising sun in a playing reimagining of the cow jumping over the moon. Costello’s piece will be accompanied by the gentle medieval melodies of Pearl in the Egg.
In true First Light tradition, a free feast of fish and rolls will be offered to all Dawn-gatherers, offering a chance to break bread with your fabulous fellow Sunrise Club members…
