Orchidées

Standard £20 // Solidarity £26 // Kirklees Resident £18 // Under 30 £6
Our Solidarity ticket price is an opportunity for audiences to support our work by purchasing a ticket at a slightly higher price (the cost of a Standard ticket plus 30%). Read more about Solidarity prices here.

Advance booking required

Estimated end time: 5.15pm

Kate Ellis cello

Nick Roth (Ireland/UK, 1982)
Orchidées (2025) 70’ UK Premiere

Kate Ellis performs the UK premiere of Nick Roth’s Orchidées, an étude for solo cello exploring the evolution of the orchid over its 100-million year history, translating the DNA gene sequences that form the architecture of the flower into music.

The Orchidaceae form one of the world’s most diverse families of flowering plant – endemic to almost every geographical region found on Earth, from tropical rainforest to arid desert, from marshy boglands to Antarctic tundra. Driven by formal investigation into this extraordinary mutability of orchids, whose flowers have evolved to incredible architectural complexity, Orchidées asks what their sensitivity and responsiveness to environmental conditions can teach us about our own survival in a rapidly changing world, with its ever-increasingly complex web of ecological crisis.

Developed in collaboration with orchidologists, geneticists, photographers and horticultural specialists, Orchidées translates the gene expressions controlling floral architecture into five individual movements (one for each of the evolutionary sub-families of the genus). By mapping nucleobase sequences to the harmonics of the cello’s four strings, codons to specific pitch sets and protein chains to gestural ways of playing the instrument, Roth enables the audience to ‘hear’ the DNA sequences of the five families, sonifying the themes, repetitions and increases in complexity that are hidden in the code of 100-million years of orchid evolution.

At once intimate and expansive, Orchidées invites listeners into a sonic ecosystem shaped by curiosity, collaboration and close observation of the natural world.

Produced by hcmf// as part of The Current Climate; supported by Culture Ireland, Hinrichsen Foundation and Vaughan Williams Foundation

Orchidées was developed in collaboration with orchidologists Barbara Gravendeel, Dewi Pramanik and Richa Kusumawati of Naturalis Biodiversity Center Leiden, with timelapse videography by Andrew Sanchez and Brandon Tam at The Huntington, Los Angeles, supported by curator Sean Lahmeyer. Inspired by the photographic work of Thomas Balaÿ, the project evolved through conversations with Alain Benoît of the Société Française d’Orchidophilie, photographer Lanka Perren, and geneticists Aoife O’Driscoll and Enrico Coen. 

The composition was supported by the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, Culture Ireland and the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, and is dedicated to cellist Kate Ellis.

Photo: Orchidées © Linnea Stephan