Our Music, Our Story
The voices of the past meet the creative voices of the future in an evening of memory, music and film In Our Music, Our Story Music Theatre Wales presented a collection of new works which echo the past and hail the future, including:
- New short works by young composers from Wales aged 14–18 were workshopped and developed at the Parc and Dare and performed by Sinfonia Cymru.
- The screen premiere of a new Film Noir Digital Detective Opera, created by young people aged 16–25, was filmed in the corridors and backstage at the Parc and Dare.
- Two new works were also created by Welsh composer Luke Lewis, each springing from local voices
- Quiet Thoughts / Myfyrdodau Tawel – drawing on the voices of the present from Harriet Fleuriot’s recently created film Interior Windows, featuring interviews with local women.
- The Echoes Return Slow – responding to powerful voices of the past from the 1971 film Women of the Rhondda, mixed with interviews with local miners recorded in the Workingmen’s Institute (now the Parc and Dare) by Alan Lomax in 1953, during his world tour documenting folk music and traditions. Originally commissioned by London Sinfonietta for their Writing the Future programme.
Luke Lewis’s works were performed by Sinfonia Cymru, conducted by Iwan Teifion Davies, incorporating film, tape, and a newly commissioned poem by Owen Sheers, created in collaboration with and read by Kyle Stead.
It was an evening of reflections past and present, and a celebration of creativity to come.
Compere: Samuel Bees.
Our Music, Our Story took place at the Parc and Dare Theatre, Treorchy on Thursday 11 September at 7.30pm.
Before the performance, Music Theatre Wales also presented a discussion event, The Artist and the Archive, at Treorchy Library.
