BŴM! is a pathway for four early-career artists (or four early-career ensembles/groups) in making outdoor music and sound that responds to themes of climate crisis, from 2023-2025.

It's a partnership between Tŷ Cerdd, Oxford Contemporary Music and Articulture and will support artists to develop practical and creative skills and to learn about embedding climate responsive work into their practice. This is all made possible by the incredibly generous support of Jerwood Arts, Arts Council of Wales and PRS Foundation.

The four selected music-creators below will each receive £1500 for their participation, alongside direct creative-producer support from OCM, Articulture and Tŷ Cerdd team members over the first nine months of the programme. A series of gatherings across the period will bring the cohort together to share learning, ideas and work-in-progress and to hear from experts in the field.

Ella Roberts

Ella Roberts is a Composer and Sound Designer based in Cardiff. Ella graduated with First Class Honours from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and was awarded the Beryl Weale Prize for Composition and the Midori Matsui Memorial Prize.  

Environmental sound and Landscape form a large part of Ella’s compositional practice. Ella collects field recordings in a variety of locations, which provide inspiration for her music. In 2022 she launched her new educational resource, The Field Recording Project, an online sound map of the UK which anyone can explore and contribute to.  

Ella has recently been commissioned by the Cardiff Chamber Orchestra and has workshopped music with members of the London Sinfonietta. In May 2022, Ella directed and composed for her own theatre show Elegantly Destroy. Ella’s film score for short film Overs was featured on BBC2 Wales and she has also scored Simon Stephens’ debut screenplay  LOVE. 

Soundcloud || Website || Field Recording Project || Facebook || Instagram || X || YouTube ||

Francesca Simmons

Madame Ceski/Francesca (pronounced Chesky) is a Welsh composer, performer & collaborator, based in Bristol. She works in an exploratory & multi-disciplinary way across sound, image & installation.

Her solo experimental work sits at the intersection of DIY chamber folk & visual music, and has been played on Late Junction, BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio Wales & Radio Cymru. Using improvisation, performance & experimentation, it focuses on ‘folk’ in its widest sense – people’s habits & traditions, ranging from the mundane to the spiritual. Her work is often string & vocal based with improvisation & field recordings, juxtaposing classical acoustic instruments, fluid tuning systems & handmade sounds.

She collaborates regularly with a variety of artists & companies, ranging from theatre to bands and everything in-between. As a multi-instrumentalist performer she has played widely across the UK and internationally - Brazil, China, Taiwan, Chile, Melbourne, USA & Europe. She regularly works with visual theatre companies 1927 and The Paper Cinema.

Recent work includes the Alan James Creative Bursary 2021-22, an Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Award, an Arts Council DYCP grant & exhibiting at Grayson Perry’s Art Club. During 2023-24 she has been working with Tredegar Town Band & the Vale of Glamorgan Festival to create an experimental piece for brass band & electronics, based on the weaving patterns of William Jones of Holt, North Wales (1785). Within Bristol, she is a member of Pervasive Media Studios & also works weekly with asylum seeker & refugee musicians.

|| Instagram || Twitter || Website ||

Gwen Siôn

Gwen Siôn is an award-winning composer, producer, pianist and multidisciplinary artist working with sound, sculpture, DIY electronics, video and installation. Her practice explores the relationship between music and ecology, and she creates multi-instrumental, vocal and electronic compositions, and her own hand-built instruments and experimental sound devices by recycling found objects and natural materials.

Gwen is interested in the relationship between sound and environment, ecology, mythology, ritual and synaesthetic crossover. Engaging in acts of translation and transformation, she interprets landscape in musical terms, exploring how composition can be used as a means of mapping space and the cultural, ecological and socio-political significance of space. Gwen has worked on a broad range of music and sound projects, commissions, public installations, performances, exhibitions and residencies throughout the UK and internationally, having gained support from organisations including Arts Council England, Sound and Music, British Music Collection, Arts Foundation, Tŷ Cerdd, Sound UK, Atelier11 Paris, GreywoodArts Ireland, StokkoyArt Norway, University of the Arts London, Netflix, Leland Music, Liquid Listening, LMVH, MullenLowe and Sustainability First.

|| Instagram || Soundcloud || Website ||

Teifi Emerald

TeiFi - “Rude Grooves and Smooth Loops” is a chameleon - with a blend of  funny, rude, bi-lingual Welsh-English hip-hop and soul, and nature-inspired ethereal celtic-pop with lush harmonies.  

Live - she is joined onstage by her crew from the TeifiVerse with songs about bodies, motherhood, nature, sensuality, and Welsh-Lady Mermaids, and a bit of dance thrown in. 

Her ongoing project "Unwaith Rownd Yr Haul" (Once Round the Sun) is a playful Welsh language rap/song cycle about native plants, with one plant for each month of the year.

@theTeifiverse  https://linktr.ee/theTeifiVerse