The Beating Wing Orchestra
Sunday
The Beating Wing Orchestra (BWO) is a unique, musically diverse orchestra comprising musicians from Greater Manchester's Refugee communities and other culturally diverse musicians from the region.
Its main aim is to experiment, play, create and perform challenging new music that draws on a global music vocabulary. BWO was brought together by CAN in January 2007 through its Exodus Live music project, to create and perform a new international composition commissioned by Manchester International Festival (MIF) as part of their original and new works festival.
The Palestinian singer/composer Reem Kelani was engaged as the artist/composer. She used collaborative workshop methods to develop the final 30-minute piece of music Paradise in Strangers, which was performed at Exodus Live on Sunday 8 July at the Manchester Academy as part of the Manchester International Festival.
The performance was a sell-out and gained critical acclaim, including a five-star review in the Manchester Metro News. The project created opportunities to learn and perform, to form artistic collaborations with cultural forms from communities whose paths rarely cross, and also gave much-needed exposure to musicians from under-represented cultures resident in the region.
In partnership with CAN, the Beating Wing Orchestra has once again been commissioned by MIF to perform a new work for the July 2009 festival with International Artists Amadou and Mariam, a Malian music partnership who have achieved global success by combining West African influences with rhythm and blues. They have been working with BWO since December on a collaboration which will be performed over two nights in the Pavilion in Albert Square in Manchester.
