Listening with Trees: Inside Lud’s Church and How to be a Forest

Across two innovative performances Inside Lud's Church and How to be a Forest – featuring acoustic instruments, live electronics, microtones, and field recordings – four musicians working at the intersection of sound and ecological research explore our sonic relationships with the more-than-human world.

The works in this programme explore poetic, affective and ecological relationships with arboreal beings and landscapes, inviting audiences to step into environmental presence and listen to the shifting temporalities of woodland locales.

📅 Thursday 30 April 2026

⏰ 6:00pm - 8pm

📍the Whitworth, Grand Hall

🎟️ Book your free tickets now

Inside Lud’s Church is across-genre microtonal piece inspired by the geology and geography around the chasm known as ‘Lud’s Church’. Lud’s Church is a surprisingly deep chasm hidden in the woodland of the Peak District in Staffordshire, England. It is dark, foreboding and damp, even in summer: an excellent hiding place – hence being associated with many stories and histories, including Robin Hood; and also Gawain and the Green Knight. Notably it is where a group of Christian reformers, followers of John Wycliffe, hid to escape persecution in the 15th century. It is thought that they sung psalms whilst hiding there, and it is speculated that their nickname, the ‘Lollards’ (or mutterers) refers to their style of delivery of such psalms – and this is how the chasm got its name.”

The project brings together composer Richard Whalley, trumpeter Stephen Altoft, electroacoustic composer‑singer Sarah Keirle‑Dos Santos, poet John McAuliffe and plant‑humanities researcher Anke Bernau in an exploration of Lud’s Church’s sonic and poetic environment. The work combines microtonal trumpet, voice, Lumatone, electroacoustics, field recordings, text and improvisation.

How to be a forest is a performance work written by Henry McPherson is for improviser, electronics, and field recordings. Part of a developing series of performances and audiovisual compositions called 'Ecollages', each of which explores listening- and sounding-with the more-than-human world. 'How to be a forest' focuses on regenerative cycles of listening, playing, and looping alongside an asynchronous collage of sound propelled by semi-autonomous electronics. The performer uses close-amplified DIY and acoustic instruments to create a stacking collage of sounds over a 40 minute duration. An exploration in refracting forested landscapes, the score for the work invites the performer to generate a shifting sonosphere in response to different layers of woodland environments – canopy, understory, rhizosphere – in dialogue with field recordings taken from wooded sites across England and Scotland. The work plays perceptually with nonlinear orientations of listening, inviting reflection on cyclicality, arboreal time, tangling and branching sonic forms.

How to be a forest was premiered at Bonjour Claude's Scratch Night, Levenshulme Old Library, Manchester, September 2024, with subsequent performance New Xpectations Audio Camp, Aberystwyth, Welsh Experimental Music Alliance, November 2024 supported by Ty Cerdd. An audiovisual version was installed at Fox Yard Studio, Lowestoft, in December 2024. Broadcast on The Sound of Curiosity Podcast (Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble, OR, USA) in March 2025, and The Watt from Pedro Show (CA, USA) in July 2025.

Performers:

Stephen Altoft – trumpeter, flugelhornist, improviser, composer, teacher - https://www.stephenaltoft.com/

Sarah Kierle-Dos Santos (Innovation Fellow, Creative Manchester, UoM) – composer, singer, and field recordist – www.sarahkeirle.co.uk

Henry McPherson (Bicentenary Research Fellow, Dept. of Music, UoM) – composer, improviser, and artist – www.henrymcpherson.org.uk

Richard Whalley (Senior Lecturer in Composition, Dept. of Music, UoM) – composer and pianist – www.richardwhalley.com

With additional collaboration for In Lud’s Church from:

Anke Bernau (Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature, University of Manchester) and John McAuliffe (Professor of Poetry and Director of Creative Manchester, Uuniversity of Manchester)

About the venue

The Whitworth is a venue with level access throughout, and facilities to support you during your visit. Alongside this our visitor team will be on hand to assist you in the gallery. Find out more about planning your visit to the Whitworth and accessibility information for you.

If you’d like to speak to a team member about any access or additional needs, please get in touch with the gallery and we will be happy to assist you. Email [email protected] or telephone 0161 275 7450.

The Whitworth art gallery and gardens is driven by a mission to work with communities to use art for positive social change, and actively addresses what matters most in people’s lives. We are proudly part of The University of Manchester, operating as a convening space between the University and the people of the city.

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