Rainfair

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: 2pm 

Lora Kmieliauskaitė voice (live) / violin / viola d’amour (pre-recorded)
Julija Bagdonavičiūtė voice (live) / piano / harpsichord (pre-recorded) 

Arturas Bumšteinas (Lithuania, 1982) 
Rainfair (2026) 50’ UK Premiere 

A forgotten weather diary becomes the starting point for an exploration of musical harmony as a phenomenon emerging from the act of repetition in this UK premiere from Lithuanian composer Arturas Bumšteinas.

Written in 1868 by Boston land surveyor and wood mill operator Peter M. Horn, the diary was discovered more than a century later in a Berlin flea market. Bumšteinas waited until 2026 – when the calendar once again aligned with the original dates and weekdays – before transforming its daily observations into this remarkable performance. 

On stage, performers Lora Kmieliauskaitė and Julija Bagdonavičiūtė appear without their instruments, listening to recordings of themselves playing through loudspeakers and vocalising selected texts from the diary. Their pre-recorded music, recitations and songs are organised according to random numbers generated using meteorological data. 

The continuous unfolding of the diary is also accompanied by fragments of field recordings taken in the corridors of music schools, reflecting not only on the Western musical tradition’s notion of fidelity to the text, but also – as the diary is sometimes difficult to decipher – its interpretive freedoms. 

Produced by Kosmos Theatre in partnership with Tarp Tylos and presented by hcmf// as part of The Current Climate; supported by Lithuanian Culture Institute, Music Information Centre Lithuania, Lithuanian Council for Culture and Association LATGA 

Photo: Arturas Bumšteinas © Laura Vanceviciene // Lora Kmieliauskaitė // Julija Bagdonavičiūtė