“Voices like dawnlight” — Anna Lapwood’s ‘Halcyon Days’ invites us into a dream we never want to wake from

🕊️ Somewhere between memory and miracle, they sang — and time stood still.

It wasn’t just a performance. It was a rising.

In the hushed cathedral air of Pembroke Chapel, Anna Lapwood, seated like a guardian of light beneath the organ pipes, began to weave the shimmering prelude to Melissa Dunphy’s “Halcyon Days.”

Behind her, the Choirs of Pembroke College held their first breath — and when they finally exhaled, it was as if the walls whispered with them.

🕯️ “Halcyon Days” is no ordinary choral work. It moves like water remembering the sky — gentle, glistening, and full of unspoken sorrow. Written by Dunphy in homage to lost peace, its harmonies ache with longing, but refuse despair.

And Lapwood, ever the storyteller through sound, guided it like a myth reborn.

🎶 The sopranos floated like mist across the fens.
The tenors echoed like ghost bells from a distant abbey.
The basses anchored the earth while the organ shimmered with what felt like light itself.

💬 “It sounded like someone opening a window into heaven,” one listener posted afterward.
Another simply wrote: “I didn’t cry until the silence came.”

What makes this performance unforgettable is not just its beauty, but its grace — the quiet courage to sit with hope, even in a broken world. Lapwood doesn’t just play music. She blesses space.

And in “Halcyon Days”, we are reminded of a time we never lived, but somehow miss —
A time when peace still had a sound.