What does industry sound like?

Step into the extraordinary surroundings of Kelham Island Museum for an evening weaving together music, voices and sounds drawn from Britain’s industrial landscapes.

Solem String Quartet’s latest project is forged in the sounds of mills, mines and factory floors. Workers’ songs ring out through the music as looms clatter and churn, their archive recordings becoming part of the Quartet’s sound world. With traditional folk arrangements, familiar composers, new works, bird song, and a reimagining of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, this journey cuts through the industrial noise to reveal the legacy of communities built on graft, ingenuity and resilience.

The result is a concert that moves between intimacy and intensity, tradition and experimentation, landscape and industry, building a vivid portrait of the people and places behind Britain’s industrial heritage.

Programme includes:
MARSEY Industry chorale i (new work)
Soundscape landscape recordings, birdsong
Trad. arr. TRESS Ca’ the Yowes
Trad arr. MARSEY The Water of Tyne
archive (Scottish women) Waulking song (with underscoring emerging)
BRITTEN Quartet No.2, ii. Vivace
archive(Ewan MacColl) Four Loom Weaver
Soundscape industrial clamour takes over
JULIA WOLFE Dig Deep
MISSY MAZZOLI Enthusiasm Strategies
archive(Tom Clough) Keel Row (underscored)
Trad. arr. NEWELL Keelman Ower the Land
archive(Welsh pub) Welsh pub recording (underscored)
MARSEY Industry chorale ii (new work)
MARSEY Be Nice To See You
archive (Joy Division) Love Will Tear Us Apart (underscored)
MARSEY Industry chorale iii (new work)

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