Page 177 - ASMF Marriner 100 Coverage Book

Guided by a specially-created app, SoundWalk audiences take a circular route around
St Martin-in-the-Fields' local area, passing ENO's London Base at the Coliseum

©Clare Stevens

Taking the SoundWalk myself, I found contrasting memories of the area bubbling to
the surface as I navigated familiar streets and courtyards in a new way. Performing
Handel’s Messiah in St Martin’s, a church that dates from the composer’s residence
in London, to a particularly appreciative audience with bags of Christmas shopping
packed around their feet; attending a protest concert in The Actors’ Church years ago

in support of the chorus of English National Opera (ENO) when it was under a
previous existential threat (the walk passes both The Actors’ Church and ENO’s
Coliseum home); my only experience of Jury Service, when the case focused on a
fight between rival criminal gangs outside a nearby nightclub, and we found
ourselves studying a map of these same streets as we examined the evidence.