Stage

Day 2 of the New Music Biennial and I’d secured tickets for seven of the eight performances, across three venues: the Bradford2025 pop-up venue, Loading Bay; St. George’s Hall and the Cathedral.

As on Friday, each show was organised as: a performance of a 15 minute piece of new music; an interval interview with composer/performers conducted by one of the BBC Radio 3 presenters; then a repeat performance of the piece with appreciation aided by insight from the the interviews.

My highlight was probably the first performance of the day, a 10:30 start for Ellie Wilson’s Moth x Human (video trail for the piece here). Billed as a musical collaboration with moths and accompanied by an excellent animation, it was a magical start to the day.

A close second, and indeed second performance, was Jasdeep Singh Degun’s collaboration with the BBC Concert Orchestra, a melding of Indian and European classical traditions. 

The varied day continued with new early music by Stef Conner interwoven with audio clips of textile industry workers; a collaboration between electronic music producer Halina Rice and the BBC Concert Orchestra (main image); contemporary brass music composed by Ailís Ní Ríain and performed by Onyx Brass and Hammonds Band; orchestral metal composed and sung by Rylan Gleave (aka All Men Unto Me) in collaboration with Paraorchestra and finishing around 20:00 with some R&B songs from Sipho.

A very diverse musical day, and also also quite intense with just half an hour between performances, and venues ten minutes apart. The day started with rain but the sun came out to help show off the city to people who were visiting it for the first time. At times it was a struggle to snatch refreshments in between shows, but I guess that’s what Greggs is for. 

I didn’t take many photos during the day, but to complement yesterday’s image of a performance in the Cathedral, I snatched an end of performance view of the full BBC Concert Orchestra (with Halina Rice) taking their bows from the stage of the impressive and storied St. George’s Hall.  One thing that I learned during the day was that an elevated view adds a lot to an appreciation of how an orchestra works.

I look forward to listening to some of the performances again as they appear on BBC Sounds over the next few weeks, and that will also give me a chance to hear Sunday’s performances as I won’t be attending those.

Finally, I guess this is a great example of the dividend brought by being UK City of Culture. I doubt I’d ever have attended such an event had it not been in my city and free. And similarly, hopefully it will have brought many people to the city who otherwise wouldn’t have been.

(Guardian review for comparison.)