Music

New music is at the heart of all Northern Silents’ work. 

We work with both improvised and composed music. Improvisers create more-or-less spontaneous musical performances, inventing music in real time, as the audience watches the film.

Composers plan and notate their scores, which are then performed by other musicians. A composed score can take weeks or months to create, and is then rehearsed before finally being performed. A composed score can be performed over and over again, whereas each improvised performance is a one-off, unrepeatable event.

Meet some of our improvising musicians

Find out more about our composer commissions