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Kate Molleson presents a second programme of exclusive recordings from the 2023 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Tonight's programme includes Skull, an important new work by featured composer Rebecca Saunders. Given its UK premiere at Huddersfield by the Oslo Sinfonietta, Skull follows on from Skin and Scar as the final panel in a triptych she has written on the theme of bodily surfaces and cavities. Written for 14 instruments, it draws on a passage in a novel by Haruki Murakami describing a skull enveloped by and containing a profound silence, ‘Held like smoke within. It is unfathomable, eternal, a disembodied vision cast upon a point in the void.' Also tonight, the vocal group Exaudi premiere a new work by Jürg Frey, another of the featured artists at Huddersfield in this, his 70th birthday year. Because I Could Not Stop for Death takes its inspiration from a poem by Emily Dickinson and Bai Juyi, both of which reflect on the transience of life. The Dickinson begins: "Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me."

And we stay in the half-light as Turkish composer Didem Coskunseven takes us on what he describes as a 'sonic script,' an imaginary midnight journey populated with the diverse sonic palette of electric guitar, sax, percussion, electric piano, bass synthesiser and live electronics. And there's a ten minute walk with the members of ‘We in Front’ a walking group who join up for a walk through Huddersfield's Afro-Caribbean heritage.