A thought-provoking collaboration melding music and nature has shone a light on the nocturnal world of a much-maligned member of the insect family: the moth.
Violinist Ellie Wilson used moth flight data gleaned from a biodiversity monitoring station to compose Moth x Human, which was commissioned by producer and charity Oxford Contemporary Music, with support from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and premiered on 7 June at the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture New Music Biennial.
“Moths get a bit overlooked because they come out at night when we’re asleep,” said Wilson, “but as pollinators they’re just as important as bees and butterflies. I wanted to celebrate them for the amazing creatures they are.”
The starting point for Wilson’s piece was a spreadsheet of data revealing the ebb and flow of 80 moth species in a protected habitat on Salisbury’s Parsonage Downs. Wilson assigned each species a different sound, which was triggered by the record of it landing on the CEH’s monitor.
After playing back her insect collaborators’ composition for the first time, Wilson was stunned by the results. “It was brilliant. The moths ended up creating this rather amazing piece for me.”
Fragments of melody from the moths’ movement informed the music Wilson composed for accompanying musicians who played the violin, cello, trombone, piano and synths.
The result is an ethereal piece of work highlighting the impact of habitat decline on UK moth populations: the composition ends with a section using data from a farmland monoculture with only 19 moth species.
“It’s quite euphoric at the beginning but things are very, very different by the end,” noted Wilson. You can really hear the difference.”
Moth X Human was commissioned for the PRS Foundation, Southbank Centre and Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture New Music Biennial.
Free tickets are available now for the Southbank Centre (4-6 July).
This article was originally published on Positive.news and was republished here, with permission, under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license. Learn more about third-party content on ZanyProgressive.com.
