Earth & Sky
Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture
Experience the wild landscape above Haworth in a totally new way with Earth & Sky, Opera North’s immersive soundwalk for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
As you explore the countryside made famous by the Brontës, each step you take will trigger, via GPS, a special soundscape featuring music, field recordings and poetry.
Alongside brand new commissions from three contemporary women composers, a sound artist and a local poet, you’ll hear the Orchestra of Opera North performing work by the 19th century Bradford-born composer, Frederick Delius and the voices of the Chorus of Opera North.
To take part, start by downloading the Earth and Sky app for your device:
Android iOS
The length of the walk is 2.6 miles / 4.2km over uneven terrain and takes approximately 1 hour 30 mins.
Setting Off
To enjoy the soundwalk, simply download the ‘Earth & Sky’ app on your device. Earth & Sky is available on both iPhones and Android operating systems, but you must have versions IOS15 or Android 15 or higher installed for the app to run. You’ll need download the walk using wifi – this is available at the Brontë Parsonage Museum before you set off. Remember to connect your headphones before pressing ‘start walk’! Wooden posts at the site of each commission will let you know when it’s time to pause and listen.
If you don’t have a compatible smartphone/ tablet or need a larger format screen, you can book to borrow a device from the Brontë Parsonage Museum before your visit. This will include a set of headphones.
As the terrain is rocky and uneven with steep inclines, we regret it isn’t suitable for pushchairs or people with mobility restrictions. They are invited to enjoy the work virtually by accessing the digital version created by York XR Stories below.
Please take care on the walk:
- Don’t walk the soundtrail in the dark
- Pay close attention to your footing on the walk due to uneven surfaces
- Wear appropriate footwear and clothing
- Stay hydrated and pack SPF on hot days
- Please leave the site as you found it and do not litter
- Keep an eye on young children at all times
For help using Earth & Sky, please see FAQs.

Starting the Earth & Sky soundwalk © Tom Arber
The Artists
To create the Earth & Sky soundwalk, Opera North invited contemporary electronic composer and Venice Biennale’s artistic director of music, Caterina Barbieri, Kenyan experimental composer Nyokabi Kariũki and Welsh multidisciplinary artist Gwen Siôn to create new music and sound works in response to the untamed upland site soaring 1,000 feet above Haworth,
The resulting soundscapes are woven together with on-site field recordings by artist Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos and new poetry written especially for the walk by our Voice of the Hills, Bradford-born poet Nabeelah Hafeez.
Caterina Barberini
The music of Italian composer Caterina Barbieri investigates the creative potential of computation and complex generative techniques to explore themes related to memory, time and phenomenology of perception, often interrogating states of trance and emotional intensity.
For Earth & Sky, Caterina has composed a site-specific work, inspired by, and located at, the tumbling hill of rocks on the outer perimeter of the Quarry on Penistone Hill. It was the Limit of My Dream features her signature electronics, chromatic vocal harmonies sung by members of the Chorus of Opera North and brass drones played by members of the Orchestra of Opera North.
Composed by Caterina Barbieri, Lyrics by Caterina Barbieri & Ruben Spini, Vocal Arrangements by Phoenix Rousiamanis

Caterina Barbieri © Tom Arber
Nyokabi Kariũki
Kenyan composer Nyokabi Kariũki creates sound from a diverse musical palette with influences ranging from classical to choral, field recording to (East) African musical traditions. Her music centres experimentation, improvisation and explorations into how sound has been used to preserve the African memory.
Interested in the flora and fauna found on Penistone Hill, Nyokabi was inspired by the lake near the start of the walk and how a butterfly traverses the environment around it.
Her piece makes use of muttered voice and choral styles and invites the listener to follow the butterfly (‘Kipepeo’ in Kiswahili) around the landscape, as it calls ‘Tembea nami’ (‘follow me’).

Nyokabi Kariũki © Tom Arber
Gwen Siôn
Gwen Siôn is an experimental composer, music producer and multidisciplinary artist working with sound, sculpture, DIY electronics, video and installation. She creates multi-instrumental, vocal and electronic compositions and designs and builds her own handmade electronic instruments and experimental sound devices by recycling found objects and natural materials.
For Earth & Sky, Gwen has taken her inspiration from the natural and industrial elements found within the landscape, including rock strata and quarrying processes. Her resulting piece, Quiet Earth, combines electronics and acoustic instrumentation, both unaltered and heavily distorted environmental recordings, and vocal recordings which include fragments from literary texts written about the moorlands.

Gwen Siôn © Tom Arber
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos is a field recordist, electroacoustic composer, and singer based in Manchester. Her works primarily explore the connection between people and their environment.
For this project, Sarah has recorded bird calls and other natural sounds from the site on Penistone Hill, connecting the listener to the world around them and connecting one composition to the next.
Sarah has also augmented two classical pieces by Frederick Delius, played by the Orchestra of Opera North, with recordings of a variety of natural sounds from the dawn chorus and curlews, to grasses rustling on the moor and the fluttering of wings.

Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos © Tom Arber
Nabeelah Hafeez
Bradford-born poet, creative practitioner and photographer Nabeelah Hafeez creates interpretive pieces with a focus on identity; layering history, home and belonging and unpicking the human experience through word play and imagery.
Nabeelah has written three original poetic works – Let Us Begin, Darzi and Ghazal – anchoring the experience through nature, place and identity, and responding to both the landscape of Earth & Sky, and the trio commissions from the composers.

Nabeelah Hafeez © Tom Arber
Experience Earth and Sky in 360
Earth & Sky is commissioned and produced by Opera North for Bradford 2025 City of Culture’s Wild Uplands programme and supported by the Delius Trust