Around Here, The Birds Plant The Trees

"This piece is a sonic meditation on land stewardship and the importance of wild spaces. I wrote it after seeing fifty hectares of the landscape around my home clear-felled in one sweep by a monoculture industrial forestry company and then, in the subsequent years, watching nature try to heal those spaces — seed by seed, wing by wing.

This work honours those creatures and the quiet repair they perform and asks us to consider the land of which we are guardians and how we co-habit those spaces." — Natalia Beylis

‘Around Here, The Birds Plant The Trees’ was written in response to a commission asking composer Natalia Beylis to consider an aspect of climate change.

The work began with musicians meeting in a field, taking its sights and sounds as a starting point to explore land and its borders, guardianship, governance and policy — and how this all affects the inhabitants.

Together with percussionist Willie Stewart, cellist Eimear Reidy, fiddler Tola Custy and viola players Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh and Ultan O'Brien, Beylis invites you to this performance to consider the past, present, and possible futures of a single field.

This composition is produced and co-commissioned by hcmf// and New Music Dublin as part of The Current Climate and Kirklees Year of Music 2023. This piece is also supported by the Kirklees Council and Culture Ireland.