Venue touring and festivals have always been a key part of Sound UK’s programme. Here we take a look back at a selection of the tours and diverse array of brilliant artists we have had the pleasure to work with over the last 25 years.
Polly Eldridge, Sound UK’s Director, says:
“It was during my first job 30 years ago, working for Cheltenham Jazz Festival, that the love of bringing artist and audiences together struck. Since then, we’ve brought together 100s of artists and 1000s of people in clubs, village halls, and major concert halls. We’ve commissioned and created new collaborations and work from the ground-breaking east London Fertilizer Festival to Pee Wee Ellis’s Funk tour.”
Food / Iain Ballamy
Back in 2001, this tour was one of the very first we produced, funded by Arts Council England’s incredible and ambitious live music touring strand, Contemporary Music Network.
The tour marked the start of an ongoing 25 year strong relationship with the super talented UK saxophonist Iain Ballamy, and was a gateway into the world of Norwegian jazz.
Fertilizer Festival
A four-day festival of the finest new music…good shit that fertilizes the mainstream.
First organised in 2002, the festival brought together a fertile mix of music, artists and cultures.
We went on to produce four more iterations of the festival celebrating music from the UK, Germany, Poland and France.
Dhafer Youssef
with Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset, Audun Erlien and Rune Arnesen.
In 2004, we produced this unique tour, with the mesmerising Tunisian vocalist and oud player Dhafer Yousssef and Arve Henriksen, uniting the spirituality of Sufi with the evocative soundscapes of the Norwegian electronic scene.
A tour produced for the Contemporary Music Network.
Quercus
In 2006, we first produced a tour with Quercus, bringing together three of the UK’s most celebrated jazz and folk musicians, June Tabor, Iain Ballamy and Huw Warren. Quercus perform exquisite chamber music that weaves together the essence of folk and jazz with an evocative mixture of words and music encompassing jazz, folk and traditional songs in contemporary settings.
Back in 2006 there was some consternation around bringing jazz and folk together! Strange huh. This autumn we are again touring them and the sell-out audiences show how far ahead of the game this group were and how audiences have now embraced the cross-fertilisation of genres.
“An unlikely trio, you might think, but the combination proves quite magical. Together they create a subtle new idiom.” The Observer
Nearly 20 years later, and this autumn we are producing their latest tour dates, through October and November 2025. Find out more - Quercus 2025 Live Dates.
Will Gregory Moog Ensemble
In 2015, we first produced a tour with Will Gregory’s Moog Ensemble – a stellar line up featuring 10 musicians on stage - stretching the possibilities of the Moog synthesiser through newly composed music, transcriptions of classical works, and their own versions of music from popular culture and film.
To mark the 10th anniversary of Robert Moog’s death, the programme featured a new clocking device specially built for the ensemble, enabling all synths to be synced to produce music previously impossible to perform live.
Find out more on our event page: Will Gregory Moog Ensemble
The Planets
“Holst orbits into the modern age… each piece fizzes with textural detail, the musical analogue of the sulphuric swamps, ice storms and metallic hydrogen clouds that characterise our solar system.” **** John Lewis, The Guardian
In 2018, The Planets took audiences on an astronomical journey into new music with the Ligeti Quartet performing 8 new planetary works.
Composers Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Deborah Pritchard, Laurence Crane, Mira Calix, Richard Bullen, Shiva Feshareki, Samuel Bordoli and Yazz Ahmed connected with astronomers to explore the modern science of our solar system.
Taking inspiration from the latest explorations of Mars, Earth, Mercury, Saturn, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune, the tour invited audiences to sit back, look up and discover The Planets 2018.
"Mindblown - just back from #Planets2018 at @WinSciCentre. Sitting in the middle of a string quartet whilst whizzing around the Solar System. And being a total fanboi hearing from a Cassini imaging scientist about that amazing mission." Audience comment
Find out more on our event page: The Planets 2018
A Change is Gonna Come – Music for Human Rights
“This celebration of political anthems transformed them into compelling art.” **** The Guardian
In 2018 and 2019, we brought together the most gifted soul, jazz and rap artists to explore the power of protest songs.
Leading an incredible sextet, the supremely talented queens of their trade: the soulful Carleen Anderson, jazz virtuosos Nikki Yeoh, Nubya Garcia (2018), Camilla George (2019) and rappers Speech Debelle (2018) and Lady Sanity (2019).
"When you see artists at the top of their game perform from the depth of their souls it truly is an extraordinary blessing." Audience comment
Find out more on our event pages: A Change is Gonna Come (2018) and A Change is Gonna Come (2019)
Watch our project film:
Funk: A Music Revolution
In 2020 (just before the country locked down due to Covid-19), we toured Funk: A Music Revolution.
Led by James Brown’s MD, renowned saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis and co-curated by singer China Moses, the project celebrated Funk’s influence from its early days to latest sounds.
Featuring groundbreaking songs Cold Sweat and Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud, the ten-piece band journeyed through six decades of music, with new arrangements of the funk classics, riffs and samples that have influenced popular music from disco to afrobeat to hip hop.
UK street dance group The Locksmiths also joined the band on stage.
“We go to a LOT of gigs...but this....What a privilege. Thank you.” Audience comment
Watch our project film:
Find out more on our event page: Funk - A Music Revolution
Arcadia Live
In 2022-23, we toured Arcadia Live, a live soundtrack performance and screening of the acclaimed film by Paul Wright.
The film is an exhilarating study of the British people’s shifting relationship to the land. Through 100 years of archive footage, Arcadia explores the changing face of the British countryside over the last century.
Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) brought the captivating film and their critically acclaimed soundtrack to life with a specially curated 9 piece band, featuring Adrian and Will, together with folk singer Lisa Knapp and a line-up of exceptional musicians and singers.
“Spellbinding performance of Arcadia Live @BarbicanCentre last night, really wonderful to experience Paul’s film with such a rich live score by brilliantly talented musicians.” - Audience comment
Find out more on our event page: Arcadia Live
Watch the Arcadia film trailer:
Sound UK's online flyer archive - 25 years of extraordinary musical encounters
Explore our online flyer archive to see the variety of projects we have commissioned and produced over the last 25 years.
