Cor Y Penrhyn

Premiering at Llais 2024, Llwch a Llechi (Dust and Slate) by composer and multidisciplinary artist Gwen Siôn is a live audio-visual project exploring connections between music, landscape, tradition and ritual. Llwch a Llechi will be performed by an ensemble of 10 orchestral musicians, one of Wales’ oldest choirs Côr y Penrhyn (originally formed as a quarrymen’s choir for workers at Penrhyn Quarry, Bethesda), and Gwen using live electronics, including her own hand-built instruments made from recycled natural materials (slate, oak and yew). The project combines elements of experimental electronic music, contemporary orchestral composition, choral composition (specifically informed by North Wales’ working-class tradition of slate quarrymen’s choirs), field recordings and moving image to create a unique and engaging live performance piece. Llwch a Llechi takes inspiration from folklore motifs, socio-political histories, industrial heritage and the cultural relationship that exists between music and landscape, and its deeper roots in Celtic oral tradition in Wales. The project seeks to recontextualise tradition through a contemporary lens by using experimental electronic music and contemporary composition techniques. It juxtaposes the old and new, in search of ways to preserve cultural practices by finding new approaches to expression and presenting them in spaces where they have not traditionally existed. Contemporary sound and experimental music practices often exist in nightclub and gallery spaces as part of underground music and art scenes; the original quarrymen’s choirs traditionally existed in the workplace, a cappella, and feel rooted in folk tradition; live orchestral music has historically belonged to more elitist spaces harder to access for working class rural communities. This project weaves together these rich strands to create an exciting new fusion piece.