‘An unbroken arc of music': Bradford prepares for 36-hour odyssey of sound
'The whole thing is chaos,' said the conductor Charles Hazlewood, before a weekend art project with the artist Jeremy Deller that will feature Handel on Ilkley Moor at sunrise, disco from a tractor, opera blasted out of modified car sound systems and much more.
'But it will be organised chaos,' added Hazlewood. 'An acceptance of chaos … which is what it's like to live in a city, isn't it? You have to embrace the chaos.'
Hazlewood, the founder and artistic director of Paraorchestra, has teamed up with the Turner prize-winning Deller for The Bradford Progress, one of the highlight events of this year's Bradford city of culture.
It has been two years in the planning, lots of 'chatting, visiting, talking to people' and is a dizzying musical odyssey involving about 500 musicians all celebrating the sound of Bradford.
The idea is for an 'unbroken arc of music' for 36 hours, starting on Saturday at sunrise with a three-minute blast of Handel at the Cow and Calf Rocks on Ilkley Moor and processing along the moors, taking in canals, parks, cemeteries, the industrial museum, housing estates shopping arcades and more before concluding at the Mirror Pool in the city centre. There will be classical, bhangra, folk, punk, gospel, bassline, brass band, electronic, Sufi, Indian classical, and minimalist.
Deller said music was a great way of telling stories. 'You find out about the city by the music that's made in it and who's here and why and what kind of music is made and who makes it. It will be storytelling without having to make it obvious.'
The pair have been working on the project on and off for about two years and say they did not want it to be a musical relay race. 'It's so much more than that,' said Hazlewood. 'The music is continuous and it morphs from one type of music to another type of music. The edges are blurred. You get these bits of cross-fertilisation between musics that aren't meant to go together.'
A big theme of the weekend will be incongruity and unexpectedness.
Neither Deller nor Hazlewood wanted to give away all the surprises, although they did disclose the prospect of opera from the sound systems of modified cars. Have the young men involved enjoyed it? 'Well, it's not entirely clear if they've 'enjoyed' it, let me put it like that,' said Deller.
Another possible highlight is a performance of Steve Reich's The Four Sections by the Paraorchestra in the Broadway shopping centre, which is a particular thrill for Hazelwood.
'I've always wanted Paraorchestra to play in a shopping arcade. A big part of our work is about rubbing out the fourth wall, rather than being an audience member on the outside looking in, they can be on the inside looking out.'
Hazlewood said he wanted people to see the sweat on a trumpeter's upper lip, to be behind a double bass and feel its vibration.
'Orchestras do tend to be these rarefied beasts where, often, players walk on stage and don't even acknowledge the audience.
'That frustrates me because music is an act of love. It's an act of communication. It doesn't exist in a bubble.'
There will be music through the night in the cemetery although people won't literally be able to get in, 'unless you're dead,' said Deller. The santoor and electronic music should though be hearable from the street.
It sounds chaotic but is, in truth, meticulously organised by a large team. The plan is that sections will be filmed and put online for people who can't get there.
On Friday, there was an early taster of what is to come as a lone tabla player, Qaiser Khan, walked through the blazing Saltaire sunshine to the Victorian bandstand in Roberts Park.
There, between two 19th-century 10ft-cannons, singers from Song-Geet, Yorkshire's first south Asian women's choir, performed. They were followed by wind players from the Paraorchestra playing Mozart.
Different people will get different things from the weekend but above all, Deller said, he wants people to just enjoy it.
'Enjoy the music in these very familiar and unfamiliar surroundings. It's quite straightforward really – people coming together and listening to music and participating. Often it is the simple ideas which are quite complicated to make. This is a simple idea but there are a lot of working parts.'
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