a major site specific sound walk / installation for Hull 2017 in conjunction with Opera North
April - June 2017
Music by Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen, guitarist Eivind Aarset and electronic composer Jan Bang gives way to the vast sound of the Orchestra and Chorus of Opera North; threaded through with the deep music of the Bridge itself, captured by Hull based sound artist Jez riley French.
From an interview with Jan Bang:
“His authentic soundscapes have been a condition required by the cultural capital, which ordered the work. The sounds are a backdrop to the composition. Jez Riley French is a supreme man to work with. He was also present during the first survey of the bridge last summer,” says Bang.
They walked across the bridge and listened. Everyone walked and listened intently – the composers and the “ambience man” from Hull. They listened to the wind, the river and the bridge’s “song”. The sound from the steel against the concrete, the rubber wheels against the asphalt, the waves against the noise of the engines, and the song of the reeds in the wind.
For Bang and his fellow composers, it was important to capture the character of the bridge and to ensure an interaction between Riley French’s recordings and Opera North’s choir and orchestra. This was, in fact, the other condition named by the commissioner: that the well-known musicians from Opera North, with their headquarters in Leeds, were to perform the music.
