We often feel anthropogenic environmental change with our senses: we feel the extra-ordinary dry and hot summers in the UK, we smell the haze coming from burnt biomass and feel the tickle in our throats, we can see that our seasons are out of sync – but what does environmental change sound like?
Across the world, changing environmental rhythms are slowly – and alarmingly – becoming part of everyday lives. For example, we come to expect that there’ll be a ‘fire’ season in the UK in the summer, we learn to prepare for ‘haze’ pollution in equatorial Southeast Asia.
This concert is the output of a YESI International Fellowship Project “Echoes of Climate“, which explores how music and artistic practice can communicate and make felt the environmental, emotional, and cultural dimensions of environmental change in ways that words alone cannot. Bringing together Gamelan Sekar Petak, Rhythm in Bronze, researchers from the University of York and the London School of Economics, we combine contemporary gamelan performance, improvisational composition, and environmental humanities research.
Through an international exchange of researchers and musicians comprising two multi-day residency workshops, we reflect on our encounters with the changing world around us. Through experimentation of sounds and musical structure, we translate these experiences, emotions, and visions into the intricate melodies, experimental textures, and innovative rhythms that you hear in this concert.
To learn more about the performers, please visit the event page https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/public-lectures/sem1-26-27/echoes-climate/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Events%20wc%207%20Sept%2026&utm_content=Events%20wc%207%20Sept%2026+CID_e65cb3e501c6d75503be38512dd561a6&utm_source=Public%20lectures%20newsletter&utm_term=Echoes%20of%20Climate%20free%20performance
The concert will be held on Wednesday 16 September 2026, 7.30pm to 9pm, at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, Campus West, University of York. The event is free, but booking is required at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfS0erZiX1ebWX1XTEGpphTIiR008JeCWGkNBNaIrTkY9OZ6w/viewform
The venue is wheelchair accessible.