Setting of Ian Charleson's poem, "Time" for Treble and Chorus (Pre-vocal demo) by Classicalbanksy

From the moment Sabrina Gülden, who runs the Ian Charleson Legacy website and blog, showed me this poem last year, I have wanted to set it to music. And when I approached The BBC Singers' manager, Rob Johnston, an old friend and fellow alumnus of the Royal Academy of Music in London about it, he was immediately enthusiastic. The BBC Singers was where my professional carer as a singer began after I left college, and I was delighted to be able to come back to them with this very special setting.

I've been a patient at the Ian Charleson Day Centre, the HIV clinic at the Royal Free Hospital in London, for 12 years now. The ICDC (as it's known) is a special place with wonderful staff, and they have saved me from myself on more than one occasion. So it's inevitable for me to resonate with Ian's poem. I understand where he was emotionally, how he felt when he wrote these lines, during the last months of his life, because I've been there myself.

I've lived with HIV in my life since 2002. By the Grace of God, and the good fortune of medical advancement, I've been spared the all-too early grave that took Ian, and I still struggle with that twist of fortune.

I wish I'd known you, Ian. I wish you'd had access to the treatment I do, that you might still be here. I wish the whole HIV/AIDS catastrophe had never happened. But alas, it did, and the ICDC and its staff are a fitting tribute to your legacy and memory.

"Time" - by Ian Charleson

I have wasted so much time
Time that was not mine to waste
And now I cry for that wasted
time and pull up my soul from
the dark cave in which I have
Kept it all this while
and I say … you are free