Chorus of Opera North – The Wind

Born and raised on Orkney, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Erland’s sensitivity to the relationship between landscape and psychology has been a constant over the course of a diverse and collaborative career. Having covered everything from folk, prog and indie rock to field recordings and ambient music, he is now flourishing as a contemporary classical composer and solo artist. For this commission, he employs the human voice – a live score performance from the 18 women of the Chorus of Opera North, augmented by textural recordings and live analogue processing by Erland himself – to open up a new imaginative space for a forgotten masterpiece. The Wind is silent cinema at its most shockingly, primally potent. In her greatest role, a radiant Lillian Gish plays Letty, a young woman cast out from her sheltered Virginia home into the dust bowl of the Texan prairie, where an act of savagery – and the unrelenting northerly wind – push her mind beyond its limits.