Registered number: 1192386
MOSAIC VOICES
(A CIO Foundation)
TRUSTEES REPORT AND ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31[st] DECEMBER 2022
MOSAIC VOICES
(A CIO FOUNDATION)
REFERENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS OF THE CHARITY, ITS TRUSTEES AND ADVISERS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31[ST] DECEMBER 2022
_______________ Trustees M R Etherton J Herman H Selby T Toube D B Till Charity registered 1192386 number Registered office 5a Hansard Mews London W14 8BJ Accountants Spencer-Davis & Co Chartered Certified Accountants 4-6 Peterborough Road Harrow HA1 2BQ
MOSAIC VOICES
(A CIO FOUNDATION)
TRUSTEES REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31[ST] DECEMBER 2022
_______________
Objectives
The charity is focussed on preserving, developing and promoting British-Jewish choral heritage, bringing this unique music to audiences of all backgrounds across the UK and beyond. This to be done through the medium of live performances, recordings, films, commissioning of new music, and education programmes, with a view to creating better understanding about Jewish culture and religion.
Activities
Mosaic Voices is in its second year as a registered charity, and that period included the release of its first album with Chandos Records, entitled ‘Letter to Kamilla’, which reached No. 5 in the UK Official Classical Music Charts. The album is based on extracts from a letter of its musical director’s great grandmother, Kamilla, to her children. It was July 1942. Fortunately, her children had escaped Nazi-occupied Austria, but Kamilla had not been so lucky. She endured four terrifying years of brutality and unimaginable suffering. The letter to her children was the last thing she wrote before being sent to Theresienstadt then Auschwitz, where she was murdered. She did not know if her letter would ever reach her children.
Eighty years later, Mosaic Voices, decided to write back to her in the form of an album of Jewish songs. They wanted Kamilla to know that, although she, her husband, and her sister, Minka, lost their lives in the Holocaust, all her children survived, and lived their lives successfully and happily in Britain, as proud Jewish people. Hitler’s mission had failed.
Her moving letter, which Kamilla wrote in German, was set to music as one of the songs on this album ( Letter from Kamilla ). The other tracks that were chosen to record celebrate the diversity, mysticism, and beauty of the music that Jewish people have brought to the world over time.
A live album launch concert took place on Sunday 20[th] March with an audience of approx. 250 people. The album was made available across 10 major platforms, making the group’s unique range of Jewish songs, ancient and contemporary, available to a wide international audience.
Live sacred services were delivered by Mosaic Voices at least once per week at its home
synagogue, the New West End Synagogue in Bayswater, London. These included the High Holyday services for Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement services, which reach several hundred members of the community.
Mosaic Voices musical content online, which is available for free mostly on YouTube, received 47,334 views with 66% of those from viewers under the age of 34.
The group recorded music for, and subsequently filmed, music videos of two major new works. The first, Omnam Kein, was to commemorate the massacre on Friday 16th March 1190 at Clifford’s Tower of almost the entire population of Jewish people in the city of York. 150 Jewish people either burned to death, committed suicide or were brutally murdered by an angry mob who had trapped them inside the building. At the time, the city’s rabbi was Yom Tov of Joigny. He died in the massacre, but he left behind a series of beautifully poetic prayers, one of which, Omnam Kein, is recited by Jewish people across the world during the mystical Kol Nidrei service - the very start of Yom Kippur. It is the only prayer in Jewish liturgy to be written by an English rabbi. In its film, Mosaic Voices performs a new musical setting of the prayer, written by Benjamin Till, at the very site where the massacre took place.
Towards the end of the year BBC London TV came to film Mosaic Voices and to interview them about the Kol Nidrei service and a new project to investigate and research the origins of the music.
Mosaic Voices also recorded and filmed a new music video for a setting of a sacred liturgical piece in Hebrew language, Mechalkeil by Benjamin Till.
For the period of 2022, Mosaic Voices’ Musical Director was Michael Etherton (also its Founder) and its Composer in Residence was Benjamin Till.
Signed on behalf of the trustees by
M R Etherton (Trustee)
Mosaic Voices Accouots Y¢at Endcd 31 December 2022
Accountants Report We h2ve prepared the attached accounts from the b(K)ks and tecotds of our dient and from infomJ3tion and expl8nations prOdea to us. We have not carried out an audit. Spencer-Davis & Co. Chartered Certlfied Accountaots 4-6 Peterbor()ugh Road Hattow MAddx HAI 2BQ
mo8C Voices Income and Expenditure Account Year Ended 31 DeCebe[ 2022 Income Donations and sponsorship Performance fees Sundry income Tax rcfimds and intcrc5t 6.150 745 6.895 Expendltute Production costs Insurancc Advertising and pubb"city' IT expenses Sundry expenses Bank charges Account*ncy 4.610 183 2202 120 120 7242 Excess of expendire over income 34