25 March & 1 April, 2025
Every Lent Period since 2006, the Queen’s College Chapel creates a privileged space for anyone who is willing to experience contemplative reflection by listening to soul-piercing, grief-invoking music-song lament, and quietly meditate on personal sorrow or wider human suffering.
The Annual Oxford Lent Concerts, a tradition started by Jan and Jonathan Spurlock Stockland, draws together musicians and singers, under the direction of the Queen’s Waverley Fellow in Music and College Organist, Professor Owen Rees, and visual artists, offering their gifts freely to Oxford’s residents, and people from nearby locations. This unique initiative allows the audience to reflect in silence, in the presence of music, art, and text. Set a week apart, the Lent Concerts series (between two and four performances) has become an inseparable feature of the religious, as well as secular calendars.
The 2025 Lent programme featured two liturgical concerts titled Vox in Rama (Voice [is heard] in Ramah), articulating mothers’ lament caused by the murder of innocent children. The verse is taken from the Prophet Jeremiah 31:15, ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.’ These poignant words, quoted in the Gospel of Matthew 2:18, invite lamentable reflections about stories and images of grief and despair in various parts of the world that are currently suffering from violent conflicts. More information and the concerts’ programme is available here.
According to Jan Spurlock, the mastermind and organiser of the Oxford Lent Concert series, ‘there is something in these cries that reminds us that death and darkness are, evidently, central to life in human community. So here, together, we are given the opportunity to think and pray for ourselves – and for millions of other people – to the God whose forgiveness and loving kindness encompass all our days, even when they are dark: our hope in the Light which darkness cannot overcome’.
Interestingly, there are no announcements or the Master of Ceremonies; not a single word is vocalised during a 45-minute performance. The audience is requested to remain silent between pieces, and for a period following the final musical performance. Afterwards, all are warmly invited to view a visual art displayed near the altar area of the chapel and to speak with the artists, who stand alongside their paintings.
Visual art exhibited in the chapel corresponds to the theme of lament to enhance the audience’s aural senses, conditioning them to ‘think about the actions they have taken, the choices they have made’ that have caused despair and an increase of darkness around them.
The Event Gallery
