Earth Unwrapped: Sirens for a wounded planet – Kings Place’s latest year-long series announced

Kings Place’s 17th instalment in its year-long Unwrapped series will be exploring our relationship with nature and the eco-system, plant life and ornithology, the climate crisis, activism, protest and more, through music and spoken word. 

Earth Unwrapped, subtitled Sirens for a wounded planet, begins in January 2025 and continues throughout that year. The series will feature artists in residence, Mercury Prize nominated singer-songwriter Sam Lee, composer and producer Gazelle Twin (aka UK composer, producer, singer and visual artist Elizabeth Bernholz) and sound artist Jason Singh. 

The Sacconi Quartet and Festival Voices open Earth Unwrapped with a rare performance of Terry Riley’s Sun Rings, celebrating Riley’s 90th birthday in 2025 and the first London performance of the work in over 20 years. Utilising audio recordings of NASA’s Voyager I and II, the 10-movement suite questions humanity’s place in the universe. The Ligeti Quartet also celebrate Riley with a performance of his seminal work Cadenza on the Night Plain and the premiere of a new arrangement of Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band.

Theatre of Voices present the UK premiere of a new work by Julia Wolfe (a Kings Place commission) alongside Nigel Osborne’s The Tree of Life, inspired by his work in Lebanon with Syrian children in refugee camps. Erland Cooper presents the world premiere of his new work The Peregrine for small ensemble, inspired by J.A. Baker’s book of the same name. Cellist Nicholas Altstaedt joins the Carice Singers for an evening of old and new music that questions our relationship with an increasingly threatened environment including premieres from Raquel García-Tomas and Josephine Stephenson, as well as music from Galina Grigorjeva and JS Bach.

Violinist Daniel Pioro joins forces with Manchester Camerata for Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, interspersed with newly commissioned poetry by Sir Michael Morpurgo preceded by Caroline Shaw’s The Evergreen. Pioro also curates a weekend of deep listening entitled Time Unravelling, Sound Unfolding, inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ concept of deep listening. Audiences will be invited to actively listen and explore emotional states via the music of Bach, Oliveros, Tenney and a new commission in collaboration with Valgeir Sigurðsson. Oliveros’s music is also featured by The House of Bedlam and soprano Juliet Fraser, pairing her To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation, written in the aftershock of political upheavals of 1968, with Larry Goves Crow Rotations, performed in-the-round and enhanced through the d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system.

The venue’s resident ensemble, Aurora Orchestra, present a year-long exploration of Gustav Mahler and his fascination with nature. Resident Quartet, the Piatti Quartet take a contemporary look at our relationship with nature and the English landscape with a programme centred around the poet Alice Oswald, the quartet perform works by Joseph Phibbs, Imogen Holst, Thomas Ades and Britten. Voces8 and the Carducci Quartet present The Lost Birds, an tribute to bird species driven to extinction by humankind. The Solem Quartet contemplate and mourn Earth’s current condition, with works from Hildegard von Bingen, John Metcalf, Nick Martin, Meredith Monk and Max Richter.

All thus plus folk, jazz and much much more. Full details from Kings Place’s website.