Echoes of Invention – a Delia Derbyshire inspired commission for Coventry City of Culture

It was an honour and slightly daunting challenge to be commissioned by Bladder and String Theatre to collaboratively produce the first of the ‘Echoes of Inventions’ – an audio (voices and music/sound) radio art piece presenting Coventry voices talking about faith as part of Coventry’s year as City of Culture 2021/22.

‘Echoes of Invention’ is a modern reimagining of ‘Inventions for Radio,’ by Barry Bermange (words/voices/concept) & Delia Derbyshire (music/sound). The collaboration, which began in 1964, brought a diverse range of voices from across the country together as they shared their very personal thoughts and experiences around subjects such as faith, death, dreams…

‘Echoes of Invention’ explores Barry and Delia’s original work through the lives of people living in Derbyshire’s home city of Coventry today. In ‘Faith’ we hear from a range of perspectives as they describe their experiences of the divine, the indefinable and their deepest beliefs.

For the music, we limited ourselves to the voice of singer Amy Kakoura, who improvised around the note of A, and micro edits of the voices and words of the interviewees. We then used our preferred modern music technology tools and techniques to build the soundscape, but keeping the piece fundamentally rooted in the human voice.

It was amazing to work with the participants’ poetic sharings whilst also a bit daunting to live up to Barry and Delia’s moving and meticulous production. Delia talked about the sound and music painting a picture for the voices which was a great intention for us to start with as we composed sound/music to support the words.

This was the Research and Development phase of a project that will hopefully be expanded next year with more sections around the topics like afterlife and dreams alongside an interactive installation.

CLICK HERE to listen to/download/buy the “Faith” pieces via Bandcamp 

Funded and/or supported by: Arts Council England, Coventry University, Open Theatre, The RSC, Erica Whyman, Jen Davis, Delia Derbyshire Day, Cath Cullinane, Phillipa Cross, Joshua Patel, the Patel family and David Butler.

We would like to give special thanks to all of the featured participants who so kindly took the time to share with us and who trusted us with their words.

Project Director: Connor Alexander

Composers: Caro C & Charles Craggs

Vocal Performance: Amy Kakoura Audio

Mastering: Blacklisted Mastering

Thumbnail Artwork: Gayatri Pasricha

Visuals: created by Connor Alexander using the Oscistudio by Jerobeam