Ema Nikolovska and Joseph Middleton’s typically wide-ranging programme draws on themes of the seasons and gardens and features songs by African-American composers and poets. Miss Wheatley’s Garden is named for America’s first black poet Phillis Wheatley who is said to have been born in Senegal and brought to America at the age of 7 or 8, where she became the slave of John and Susanna Wheatley of Boston in 1781. She was taught to read and write by the Wheatley’s daughter, Mary. Danika Lorèn premiered her first song cycle, based on Lorna Crozier's infamous poetry cycle The Sex Lives of Vegetables, in 2016; Crozier was inspired to write The Sex Lives of Vegetables while baking a sweet potato, when the vegetable split, exposing a sensuous orange flesh.