In our monthly Alumni Spotlight series, we celebrate the journeys of artists who have been part of Sound and Music’s programmes. This month, we speak to New Voices 2021 alum Gwen Siôn, an experimental composer, producer, and multidisciplinary artist, as she prepares for the performance of her new audio-visual project Llwch a Llechi (Dust and Slate), which will premiere at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on Sunday October 13, 2024.
Gwen Siôn is a one of a kind artist. She is interested in the relationship between sound and environment, ecology, mythology, ritual and synaesthetic crossover, particularly the dynamic between colour and musical notation. Engaging in acts of translation and transformation, she interprets landscape in musical terms, exploring how composition can be used as a means of mapping space and the cultural, ecological and socio-political significance of space.
Llwch a Llechi field recording © Gwen Siôn
New Voices 2021
We first met Gwen in 2020 as a grant winner of Climate. Sound. Change, a British Music Collection open call, inviting composers to create new works that respond to the climate emergency. She created ‘HS2 Ghostlands‘, a moving multidisciplinary arts and research project exploring the intersection of environmental activism and sound, a theme that continues to resonate through her work today.
She went on to join our New Voices programme in 2021, our artist development programme which ran from 2018 – 2022 and supported 47 composers with coaching, mentoring and a financial grant to create a new piece of work. It was succeeded by In Motion, our new flagship artist development programme for 2023/24.
It was through New Voices that Gwen fully embraced a new creative direction.
Reflecting on her experience with Sound and Music, Gwen recalls:
“During my time on Sound and Music’s New Voices programme I began incorporating live performance into my work which had previously been very process based. I experimented a lot with environmental sounds and materials and ended up creating a new series of experimental instruments made from recycled natural materials and found objects, composing a body of multi-genre electronic music titled catHead and developing an accompanying live set using the hand-built instruments alongside vocals, field recordings and a variety of hardware, traditional acoustic and electronic instruments.
New Voices was transformative for my practice, Sound and Music’s support gave me the opportunity to experiment with new ways of working, extending my practice to live performance. I’ve continued building on this experience and am now developing live works on a larger scale, incorporating orchestral and choral elements. I’m also using the handmade instruments I created on New Voices for my latest live performance work, Llwch a Llechi (Dust and Slate).”
Llwch a Llechi (Dust and Slate)
Gwen’s latest project, Llwch a Llechi (Dust and Slate), will premiere at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on Sunday October 13, 2024, as part of the prestigious Llais, Cardiff’s international arts festival.
This ambitious live audio-visual project will bring together 10 musicians from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Côr y Penrhyn choir—one of Wales’ oldest choirs originally formed by slate quarrymen in Bethesda—and Gwen herself, performing on live electronics.
Tickets for Llwch a Llechi are available here.
What makes Llwch a Llechi truly unique is Gwen’s use of hand-made instruments crafted from recycled natural materials such as slate, oak, and yew, sourced from the same landscapes that inspire the project’s themes. This performance blends orchestral composition, experimental electronic music, field recordings, and choral traditions, reinterpreting them through a contemporary lens.
Gwen Sion Miniature Slate Harps © Gwen Siôn
Llwch a Llechi is deeply rooted in the cultural, industrial, and socio-political histories of North Wales’ slate quarries, and explores the powerful connection between music, landscape, and heritage. Gwen draws inspiration from the quarrymen’s choirs that formed in the 19th century, using elements of their working-class, folk-based choral traditions to reflect the resilience and creativity of these communities. The slate quarries, though symbolic of hardship, exploitation, and struggle, were also places where music, poetry, and artistic expression flourished, particularly within the “caban” huts where workers gathered for respite. Gwen’s work reimagines this historical interplay of landscape and culture through modern soundscapes, combining past and present in an immersive live performance.
As part of Llwch a Llechi, Gwen weaves environmental sounds recorded from the quarries into the composition, incorporating field recordings and archival footage provided by the Screen and Sound Archive of the National Library of Wales. By combining these with orchestral and electronic elements, she brings the landscape to life, creating a sensory experience that speaks to the region’s rich heritage and ongoing challenges.
Speaking about the work, Gwen says:
“Llwch a Llechi is a fusion of electronic music, environmental recordings, orchestral instrumentation and voices exploring connections between music, landscape, tradition and ritual. It will premiere on 13 October at Wales Millennium Centre, performed live by 10 BBC National Orchestra of Wales musicians, one of Wales’ oldest choirs – Côr y Penrhyn (a community group from my hometown, originally formed as a slate quarrymen’s choir for workers at Penrhyn Quarry, Bethesda), and me on live electronics using my hand-built instruments made from site-specific recycled natural materials (including slate, oak and yew).
Llwch a Llechi takes inspiration from socio-political histories, industrial heritage, folklore motifs and the cultural relationship that exists between music and landscape, and its deeper roots in Celtic oral tradition in Wales. This audio-visual project combines experimental electronic music, contemporary orchestral composition, choral composition (specifically informed by North Wales’ working-class tradition of quarrymen’s choirs), field recordings and archive footage (provided by the Screen and Sound Archive, National Library of Wales). “
Llwch a Llechi field recording © Gwen Siôn
Her journey exemplifies how artist development programmes like New Voices can help composers unlock their creative potential and help push boundaries when given the space, time, and resources to innovate and develop their unique voices. We wish Gwen all the best as she continues to challenge traditional boundaries and speak to urgent societal issues.
Tickets for Llwch a Llechi are available here.
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Sound and Music is UK’s national charity for new music. We are incredibly proud to have supported Gwen on her artistic journey. Her story demonstrates artist development programmes can open up new possibilities for composers to develop their unique voices in a competitive and rapidly changing industry.
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