Wednesday, 04 September 2024
For the first time, the UK’s world-leading classical music festival, the BBC Proms, is coming to Nottingham, and it will feature an original piece of orchestral music written by a University of Nottingham academic.
Dr Elizabeth Kelly, Head of the Department of Music, was commissioned to write a new orchestral composition for BBC Proms Nottingham: Music of Sherwood Forest, which will become part of musical history on Sunday 8 September, when Nottingham Royal Concert Hall hosts its inaugural BBC Prom with the BBC Concert Orchestra.
Dr Kelly’s nine-minute-long original score entitled Lace Machine Music takes inspiration from Nottingham’s industrial past and the city’s lacemaking industry, which she researched with support from local collections, curators and lace industry professionals.
When I was invited to compose a new work for the first BBC Prom to be held in Nottingham, I knew immediately that I wanted to celebrate the city’s heritage as a global capital of lacemaking and industrial innovation through my composition.
I grew up in Los Angeles, but a circuitous life journey brought me to Nottingham nearly a decade ago, when I took up my post at the University of Nottingham and moved into a flat on the edge of the historic Lace Market. Lace Machine Music is my love song to the vibrant, noisy, inventive city that has become my home.”
Nottingham and lace making are intrinsically connected. It was during the 19th century that innovators in the city refined more advanced machines which twisted threads together to create lace in the same way that it is woven by hand. These ‘Leavers’ lace machines – which require up to 32 processes of design and production – are still considered some of the most sophisticated textile machines ever produced. Complex lace patterns are encoded in a series of punch cards, and Dr Kelly met with Ian Emm, the UK’s last Card Puncher who took her to Cluny Lace in Ilkeston – the last Leavers lace factory in the UK. It was there she got to hear and see the very loud machines running and speak with the workers.
Dr Elizabeth Kelly visiting the Cluny Lace Factory in Ilkeston
She explains: “I was intrigued by the idea that there is a connection between a lace factory, where a range of skilled workers come together to produce intricate lace, and the orchestra, which brings together a diverse array of highly-trained instrumentalists to produce intricate music. Both the lace trade and orchestra were booming at the same historical moment. I decided to translate aspects of machine lacemaking into my composition.”
Alongside the first-ever performance of Dr Kelly’s Lace Machine Music, the orchestral scores chosen for the concert have a strong local feel to them. This thrilling first visit by the Proms to one of the country’s finest acoustic venues, the Nottingham Royal Concert Hall, offers a varied and vibrant programme inspired by local history, legends and local artists.
Conductor Anna-Maria Helsing will lead the BBC Concert Orchestra in a celebration of local Nottingham legendary hero Robin Hood, which provides the concert’s opener, with the overture to Doreen Carwithen’s colourful score to the 1954 film The Men of Sherwood Forest and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Oscar-winning music to The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn.
The programme will also feature Nottingham pianist, Clare Hammond, who provides the virtuoso thrills in Sergey Rachmaninov’s perennially popular Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, while Jean Sibelius’s atmospheric and purposeful Symphony No 3 in C Major will complete the line-up.
We are thrilled to be hosting our first BBC Prom in Nottingham with the BBC Concert Orchestra, which has added an exciting new dimension to the orchestral programme at our venue. Those who have attended concerts at the Royal Concert Hall during its 40-year history will know that it’s a special place to hear live orchestras and we’re delighted to have the opportunity to showcase its exceptional sound to hundreds of new concert-goers here and millions more worldwide on the radio and online. To have the world premiere of a BBC Proms Commission in a programme that celebrates Nottingham history and legends, makes it all the more exciting and we can’t wait to hear how Dr Elizabeth Kelly evokes Nottingham’s industrial past through the rhythmic sounds of its mammoth lace machines.”
Proms Nottingham: Music of Sherwood Forest, starting at 4pm, builds on the BBC Concert Orchestra’s partnership with the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University, which began in the Autumn of 2023 and supports a range of activity, including regular orchestral residencies in the city in association with the Nottingham Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall.
Tickets for the event range from £12 - £41 and can be purchased here. The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and forms part of the Proms 2024, Proms Around the UK.
Story credits
More information is available from Dr Elizabeth Kelly, Associate Professor in Music Composition and Head of the Department of Music, via elizabeth.kelly@nottingham.ac.uk
Notes to editors:
About the University of Nottingham
Ranked 32 in Europe and 16th in the UK by the QS World University Rankings: Europe 2024, the University of Nottingham is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities. Studying at the University of Nottingham is a life-changing experience, and we pride ourselves on unlocking the potential of our students. We have a pioneering spirit, expressed in the vision of our founder Sir Jesse Boot, which has seen us lead the way in establishing campuses in China and Malaysia - part of a globally connected network of education, research and industrial engagement.
Nottingham was crowned Sports University of the Year by The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024 – the third time it has been given the honour since 2018 – and by the Daily Mail University Guide 2024.
The university is among the best universities in the UK for the strength of our research, positioned seventh for research power in the UK according to REF 2021. The birthplace of discoveries such as MRI and ibuprofen, our innovations transform lives and tackle global problems such as sustainable food supplies, ending modern slavery, developing greener transport, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
The university is a major employer and industry partner - locally and globally - and our graduates are the second most targeted by the UK's top employers, according to The Graduate Market in 2022 report by High Fliers Research.
We lead the Universities for Nottingham initiative, in partnership with Nottingham Trent University, a pioneering collaboration between the city’s two world-class institutions to improve levels of prosperity, opportunity, sustainability, health and wellbeing for residents in the city and region we are proud to call home.
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