The Wind + Live score by Erland Cooper featuring the Chorus of Opera North at Royal Northern College of Music

In this newly commissioned soundtrack for the silent film the Wind, Scottish composer and artist Erland Cooper employs the live voice – the powerful sound of the 18 women of the Chorus of Opera North – enhanced by his own recordings and real-time processing of their performance.

The Wind is silent cinema at its most shockingly, primally potent. A radiant Lillian Gish plays Letty, a young woman cast out from her sheltered Virginia home into the dust bowl of the Texan prairie, where an act of savagery – and the unrelenting northerly wind – push her mind beyond its limits.

Erland’s score breathes new life into the empty plains, sandstorms and intensely charged terrain of this forgotten masterpiece. Born and raised on Orkney, his sensitivity to the relationship between landscape and psychology has been a constant over the course of a diverse and collaborative career that’s taken in everything from folk and prog to field recordings and contemporary classical music.

Promoted by Opera North Projects in association with RNCM.