Over the past few months Maltby Miners Welfare Band has been working with a local artist on an innovative special "site specific spatial sound work"inspired by the ebb and flow of public transport traffic in Sheffield.

Interchange

'Interchange' is a three hour installation at the city's busy Pond Street bus station by the acclaimed Rotherham artist Mark Fell, that asked the players "to respond to the acoustic character as well as the particular emptiness that such spaces have at night".

The players were situated at different points around the station complex playing to both a bemused as well as intrigued public waiting for buses as well as an appreciative Festival audience.

5-star review

The work formed part of the city's 'No Bounds Festival' and gained widespread acclaim, with a 5-star review by critic Daniel Dylan Wray in The Guardian newspaper, who said that the performance had, "…gently thundering brass instruments booming around the slightly ghostly, echo-laden station.

There is a quiet melancholy and a profound emotional resonance to the performance — which slightly resembles Terry Riley's 'In C' — as it marries huge engulfing sounds with the strange backdrop of a fully functional and bewildered-passenger-filled city centre interchange."

the work asked the players "to respond to the acoustic character as well as the particular emptiness that such spaces have at night"4BR

Exciting

A band spokesperson told 4BR: "This has been one of the most exciting and challenging projects we have worked on and has shown that whilst brass has a rich heritage it also has a strong artistic future too."