RNCM Original Voices Festival

March 2024

An intriguing and exciting evening awaited with Manchester Camerata ( directed by Caroline Pether ) playing with RNCM students in the concert hall at RNCM as part of the RNCM Original Voices Festival alongside Chris Redmond of Hot Poets, an organisation who are working to build a relationship between spoken word/poetry and those organisations working towards climate change action and innovation in order to communicate this message positively to as wide an audience as possible.

The Future Is Green initiative has also influenced this year’s festival to re examine familiar music and link this with the climate emergency and natural world.

The piece began with Chris alone on stage solo, with the first few spoken lines of the piece, followed by beautiful off stage choral voices ( Bach, St Matthew Passion ) then the small string ensemble entered and took places whilst playing, a lovely effect.

The spoken word piece was executed solo, in stages, with each musical part following on to reflect the effect the words had, including an arrangement of a Radiohead song Everything In It’s Right Place, there were elements of the familar alongside the never heard before, and each musical piece was beautifully played, a most unique experience.

 In your minds eye at times, you could see huge mountains, forests, there was a sound simulation of rainfall which was just so beautiful to hear and so realistic, we looked around for it falling!

It was a powerful spoken word piece showing the effects of climate change on everyday life, the natural world and the seemingly tiny but powerful contribution we can all try to make whilst trying to live our lives as we do.

There were many emotions in the whole performance, hope, frustration, anger, despair and the delight in the beauty of nature and the world we exist in, plus the relief of knowing that there are solutions and opportunities to halt and change the negative impacts.

It was incredibly powerful and thought provoking but was on for one night only.

We would be very happy to see it again soon!

Many thanks to Manchester Camerata, RNCM and Hot Poets.

RNCM’s The Future Is Green initiative information can be found on their website. RNCM is a beautiful space to visit and experience such varied perspectives on musical performance.

Christine Ince for Canal St Media

Published: 17-Mar-2024 (7417)