Play The Fragmented Orchestra at Watershed

Fri 12 Dec–Sun 22 Feb

Imagine if you could hear the sounds of the UK as music... Watershed is one of 24 sites across the UK hosting The Fragmented Orchestra, winner of the PRS Foundation’s New Music Award. A huge, geographically distributed musical structure, it captures and uses sounds from different places across the UK to produce a compelling and ever-changing new instrument and composition.

A unit has been installed outside Watershed’s main entrance using the massive front pane of glass to capture the sound of visitors, the river and passing boats, inner city traffic, shoppers, buskers and late night revellers. Listen carefully and you can hear sounds from the other sites when you stand outside Watershed.

Watershed is hosting a special event on Sat 21 Feb which will see an afternoon of performances across the UK. Between 1300 and 1500hrs passers by can listen to poet Ralph Hoyte and guests including John Onians from the University of East Anglia and Tom Troscianko from Bristol Neuroscience, who will be giving a short piece on the perception of colour and light in different animals. Other Bristol based spoken word performers will also be presenting their work. Details of the programme can be found here.

The Fragmented Orchestra

Anyone can play The Fragmented Orchestra and the public are encouraged to visit their local sites and help turn the UK into one weird and wonderful new instrument.

The 24 sites across the country have been selected by artist Jane Grant, musician and physicist John Matthias and BAFTA winning composer and sound designer Nick Ryan for their inherent sonic rhythms, to create a unique score that will be performed to thousands of listeners throughout the UK. From a cattle market in Aberdeen to the Brighton Seafront, London’s Roundhouse to Everton Football club, Gloucester Cathedral to the former home of the Brontes on the Yorkshire moors, this remarkable and diverse range of locations will be connected via the internet to form a network, which will adapt, evolve and trigger site-specific sounds via FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) as part of Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture programme.

Vanessa Reed, Director of the PRS Foundation, said:

What makes this project so exciting and unique is the sheer variety and number of places where anyone can hear and take part in this creation. We invite everyone across the UK to visit their nearest site and tell us about what you heard.

Dick Penny, Watershed’s Managing Director said:

Watershed is committed to creating and brokering partnerships with other arts organisations locally, nationally and internationally and this groundbreaking new sound project is a perfect example.

FFI see thefragmentedorchestra.com