Five lead artists will take part in the latest of Opera North’s Resonance residencies this April and May, developing new ideas in workshops and work in progress performances at the Company’s Leeds base, with the support of PRS Foundation.
Launched in 2017, Resonance offers professional artists from BAME backgrounds working in any genre of music, who are based in the North of England, the opportunity to take their work in new directions, to experiment with collaborators, and to test the results in front of an audience.
The first Resonance project to reach completion was South Asian Arts-uk’s commemoration of the centenary of the Partition of India and Pakistan, premiered in autumn 2017. The Pied Piper of Chibok, Moji Kareem and Utopia Theatre’s opera based on the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, was performed at the Grimeborn Festival last summer, and Errollyn Wallen and Brolly Productions’ opera The Powder Monkey is due for a full premiere in October this year.
During this spring’s residencies, jazz singer and songwriter Nishla Smith will work on a new song cycle exploring her family’s history, through her grandmother’s memories of an 8-year-old sister, Agnes, who died in Malaysia in the 1930s.
With a background and fast-developing reputation in Indian classical music, vocalist Keertan Kaur Rehal will use her residency to bring the ghazal, the traditional South Asian art-song, into the 21st Century.
Zimbabwean soul singer Thabo brings image, sound and scent together into a multi-sensory and immersive performance that will transform the gig experience through surround-sound, perfume infusions and responsive visuals.
There are more artists taking part in this programme for fuller details visit www.operanorth.co.uk
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