Earth & Sky
Opera North
Bradford 2025 and Opera North have invited composers Caterina Barbieri, Nyokabi Kariũki and Gwen Siôn, along with field recordist Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos and poet Nabeelah Hafeez, to create new music and sound works inspired by Penistone Hill – and by the music of Bradford-born composer Frederick Delius.
You can listen to selected audio tracks from the soundscape experience below, along with accompanying photography of the locations where these compositions are triggered during the geo-located soundwalk on Penistone Hill.
Listen to ‘It was the Limit of My Dream’ by Caterina Barbieri
For Earth & Sky, Caterina has composed a site-specific work, inspired by, and located at, the tumbling hill of rocks on the outer perimeter of the Quarry on Penistone Hill. It was the Limit of My Dream features her signature electronics, chromatic vocal harmonies sung by members of the Chorus of Opera North and brass drones played by members of the Orchestra of Opera North.
Composed by Caterina Barbieri, Lyrics by Caterina Barbieri & Ruben Spini, Vocal Arrangements by Phoenix Rousiamanis.
About the Artist – Caterina Barbieri
The music of Italian composer Caterina Barbieri investigates the creative potential of computation and complex generative techniques to explore themes related to memory, time and phenomenology of perception, often interrogating states of trance and emotional intensity.
Listen to ‘Kipepeo’ by Nyokabi Kariũki
Nyokabi was interested in the flora and fauna found on Penistone Hill. She was inspired by the lake near the start of the walk and how a butterfly traverses the environment around it. Her piece makes use of muttered voice and choral styles and invites the listener to follow the butterfly (‘Kipepeo’ in Kiswahili) around the landscape, as it calls ‘Tembea nami’ (‘follow me’).
About the Artist – Nyokabi Kariũki
Kenyan composer Nyokabi Kariũki creates sound from a diverse musical palette with influences ranging from classical to choral, field recording to (East) African musical traditions. Her music centres experimentation, improvisation and explorations into how sound has been used to preserve the African memory.
Listen to ‘Quiet Earth’ by Gwen Siôn
For Earth & Sky, Gwen has taken her inspiration from the natural and industrial elements found within the landscape, including rock strata and quarrying processes. Her resulting piece, Quiet Earth, combines electronics and acoustic instrumentation, both unaltered and heavily distorted environmental recordings, and vocal recordings which include fragments from literary texts written about the moorlands.
About the Artist – Gwen Siôn
Gwen Siôn is an experimental composer, music producer and multidisciplinary artist working with sound, sculpture, DIY electronics, video and installation. She creates multi-instrumental, vocal and electronic compositions and designs and builds her own handmade electronic instruments and experimental sound devices by recycling found objects and natural materials.
Listen to ‘Summer Night By The River’
Composed by Frederick Delius in 1911, performed by the orchestra of Opera North with augmented field recordings of bird calls and other natural sounds from Penistone Hill by Sound Artist Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos. This piece is experienced along the hill path leading up to the moorland.
About the Artist – Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos is a field recordist, electroacoustic composer, and singer based in Manchester. Her works primarily explore the connection between people and their environment.
For this project, Sarah has recorded bird calls and other natural sounds from the site on Penistone Hill, connecting the listener to the world around them and connecting one composition to the next.
Sarah has also augmented two classical pieces by Frederick Delius, played by the Orchestra of Opera North, with recordings of a variety of natural sounds from the dawn chorus and curlews, to grasses rustling on the moor and the fluttering of wings.
Listen to ‘On Hearing the First Cuckoo of Spring’
Composed by Frederick Delius in 1912, performed by the orchestra of Opera North with augmented field recordings of bird calls and other natural sounds from Penistone Hill by Sound Artist Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos.
Listen and read the poem, ‘Ghazal’
Written and performed by Bradford-born poet Nabeelah Hafeez, that was created especially for Earth & Sky.
Ghazal for city and earth.
In the body of the earth, each footstep is an echo
Like the stories we once told, repeat them like an echo
Breathe deeply as you move into a new chapter
Even your heartbeat knows that time is an echo
Listen for the falling and rising of your breathing
Our body is a familiar song of love that echoes
Enter onto pathways we have long forgotten
The city sings from the top, can you hear her echo?
Pebbles and pavements, each a mirror to the other
Cracks in the concrete to the highest climb like an echo
Have you ever wondered how many journeys meet here?
Tales entwine a landscape in fragments, seasons will echo
Pluck from the barrel of your eyes a tiny seed to grow
And you will learn that ever step in life is an echo
Look upon the map of changing skies, city and earth
Every moment breathes in the air of distant echoes
A heavy day tips like an hourglass into the night
Do you see the streetlamps face towards stars like an echo
My mother recites Quran Ayats under moonlight
Even in the city I hear her voice, a tender echo
Nasim, your stories carry me like praying palms, you say
your tasbih wears thin, beads will fall, but prayers always echo.
About the Artist – Nabeelah Hafeez
Bradford-born poet, creative practitioner and photographer Nabeelah Hafeez creates interpretive pieces with a focus on identity; layering history, home and belonging and unpicking the human experience through word play and imagery.
Nabeelah has written three original poetic works – Let Us Begin, Darzi and Ghazal – anchoring the experience through nature, place and identity, and responding to both the landscape of Earth & Sky, and the trio commissions from the composers.
