Urban Symphony was a project led by Manchester Camerata, in collaboration with The Bridgewater Hall for the fifth and final movement. The project worked with community groups to create musical responses to Manchester's architecture. Urban Symphony No.5 was inspired by The Bridgewater Hall itself - with nine community groups from across Greater Manchester visiting the Hall and creating visual art and music inspired by its spaces, from the mysterious undercroft to the grand auditorium and airy foyers.
On Saturday, May 28 2011, the groups gathered at the Hall to display their work whilst visitors were guided around the different exhibits on a series of tours. The groups had worked with Camerata musicians and visual artists in workshops at their own centres to develop highly individual responses to the building, influenced by the spaces they had chosen and by their own connection with the city.
Visual Arts
North City Youth Zone, a club for young people with disabilities, worked with artist Annette Cobley to create fossils like those in the foyer floor to hang above the main doors, and plaster statues mirroring the busts of Sir Charles Hallé and Sir John Barbirolli.
Positive Moves is Irlam and Cadishead Youth Project. With Michiko Fuji and Jocelyn Arschavir, they explored shadows, creating translucent images and a spooky film casting the undercroft as a dark prison.
Fairbridge supports young people who other organisations find it difficult to engage. Ian Mackay taught them the art of lino block printing, using the colours and shapes of the Hall as source material and inspiration.
The East Manchester Eyes are a new photography group from Ashton Old Road, who photographed the Hall and explored different ways of displaying images, using furniture, music stands and cut out instruments as frames. This group has generously agreed that we may use their photographs to create an album of the undercroft, allowing disabled visitors on tours of the building to gain a sense of its only inaccessible space.
Music
Square One is a community recording studio for young musicians. Their piece explored the undercroft in three different sections - Spacious, Secret and Playful - influenced by jazz, hip hop, free soundscapes, gypsy folk and classical composition.
Bolton St Andrew's Girl Guides were interested in the different views which appear through The Bridgewater Hall's many windows. Their performance included four parts: Weird a bit crazy, Upside down building, Shrunken person and Reflected.
WAST Nightingales are a choir from Women Asylum Seekers Together, who drew together the music of different nationalities into one performance. Their song explored the similarities between The Bridgewater Hall and their own lives - with apparently unstable foundations belying an inner strength.
The O50 Singers is a choir for anyone aged over 50. Their song, Reflections, contrasted their memories of the bus station which used to stand on Lower Mosley Street with the Hall which stands here today, and of the building's peacefulness during the daytime with its bustle before and after a concert.
Tameside Junior Accordion Band explored the Gallery Foyer, which reminded them of a boat. They used music to create storms, pirates and shipwrecks leading to the discovery of pirate treasure!
