CLOAK & DAGGER
MUSIC PRODUCTION
SOUNDPATHS:
MANCHESTER
I was commissioned to create two works in the Moston and Harpurhey neighbourhoods of Manchester in the UK. The first of these, ‘Soundpaths: Moston & Harpurhey’, was commissioned by Brighter Sound, SICK! Festival, DutchCulture and The Embassy of The Netherlands in the United Kingdom. It premiered as part of SICK! Festival in April 2021 and was shortlisted for a Manchester Culture Award in the category of ‘Promotion of Health and Wellbeing’ in 2022. The second work, ‘Soundpaths: Boggart Hole Clough’ was commissioned by SICK! Festival, the Oglesby Charitable Trust and Manchester City Council. It premiered as part of SICK! Festival in May 2022.
These two works can be experienced for free on the Soundpaths App, which was created specifically for these two works and can be downloaded for free from the App Store and Google Pay Store.
"Experience your local area in a brand new way using music and sound through your phone.
Think you know all about where you live?
Think again, as Soundpaths provides a breath of fresh air in more ways than one.
Whether you’re looking to explore the neighbourhood, take a gentle stroll or go for an energetic run, Soundpaths will take you on a sonic journey through the parks and streets of Moston and Harpurhey via music and sound from a phone app. Feel your mood lift as GPS tracks where you are along the route, changing the soundtrack to boost your physical and mental wellbeing.
Amsterdam-based composer Yonatan Collier has been working with communities in Moston and Harpurhey, and Brighter Sound, recording the hums of nature and the urban landscape and incorporating them into his music, creating an experience that is both new and familiar. You’ll even hear a sermon from St Dunstan’s Church woven into the music as you pass by. Maybe you’ll experience your local area in a whole new way, see beauty where you hadn’t before and create new memories about a place you thought you knew."
REVIEWS OF SOUNDPATHS: MANCHESTER
"The music overlays impressions onto the senses, it paints zones of emotions like a topographer drawing out their map. These two worlds, the emotional and physical one, meet in unison here. They elevate the mind out of its shell and spread it across parkland, rivers and roads, nestling it deep within the undergrowth, letting it linger and rest." - Disability Arts Online
"The neighbourhood of Moston in North Manchester is not a spectacular place. It doesn’t boast majestic views or impressive architecture. It is an area that faces plenty of social and economic challenges. It has some of the worst rates of mental health problems in the country. Yonatan Collier’s powerful and uplifting Soundpaths Moston project takes its audience on a journey, walking or running, into the heart of the community and finds beauty, warmth and intimacy there." - Tim Harrison, SICK! Festival
SOUNDPATHS: BOGGART HOLE CLOUGH
SOUNDPATHS: MOSTON & HARPURHEY
MOSTON & HARPURHEY ROUTE GALLERY
THE SOUNDS OF MOSTON & HARPURHEY
The field recordings used in Soundpaths: Moston & Harpurhey and Soundpaths: Boggart Hole Clough include sounds that were captured throughout the performance areas of the two works.
All of these field recordings were incorporated into the final work - some in their raw form, some after various degrees of processing.
VIDEO WALKTHROUGHS
FURTHER READING
Soundpaths: Moston & Harpurhey: The Remote Development of an Augmented Reality Musical Experience - Conference paper presented at Performance, Practice, and Process Conference 2022, Leeds Beckett University, UK. DOWNLOAD COMING SOON