JAM on the Marsh returns with celebration of Paul Mealor

Kent-based festival JAM on the Marsh is set to return to Romney Marsh in July with 10 days of music, theatre and art. This year’s programme is centred around composer Paul Mealor, long-time festival collaborator and president of JAM, the charity behind the festival.

The 2025 festival will, for the first time, be curated by founder Ed Armitage, and runs from 3-13 July across the medieval churches of Kent’s Romney Marsh. Mealor’s 50^th birthday will be marked by a Mealor @50 series featuring performances of the composer’s works. The series opens on 4 July with the UK premiere of Mealor’s The Light of Paradise performed by the BBC Singers and the Ferio Saxophone Quartet and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The following night, Britten Sinfonia will perform Mealor’s Second Symphony as part of a programme featuring works by Dove, Satie and Boulanger.

On 6 July, the festival hosts The King’s Singers’ performance of a new arrangement of Paul Mealor’s Coronation Kyrie, which became the first Welsh language work to be performed at a Coronation when it was performed by bass-baritone Sir Bryn Terfel and the Choir of Westminster Abbey at the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The Mealor @50 series closes on 11 July with a performance of Mealor’s oratorio The Farthest Shore featuring soprano Claire Seaton, bass Matthew Rose, plus long-term festival collaborators the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge and Onyx Brass, alongside community singers from around Romney March.

Mealor’s relationship with JAM began in 2002, when he submitted a score to the charity’s first Call for Music. In 2010, JAM commissioned his Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal which he adapted into Ubi Caritas for the now Prince and Princess of Wales’s wedding, gaining him public recognition. Mealor will support the next generation of composers as a mentor on JAM’s 2-week Composers’ Residency, which this year focuses on writing for piano and percussion.