Nicola Lisle talks to composer Orlando Gough about his new piece for a very unusual festival

We take it for granted, yet we can’t live without it. What is it? Breathing.

Now, to highlight its importance in all aspects of our lives, a one-day festival is set to take place across Oxford, incorporating talks, exhibitions, tours and the premiere of a new piece of musical theatre by Orlando Gough.

The event has been conceived to mark the tercentenary of the death of Dr John Radcliffe, and to celebrate his life with a fusion of arts and medical science. The centrepiece of the festival, arguably, is Orlando’s 70-minute a cappella piece, BREATHe, which is being promoted by Oxford Contemporary Music and explores the role of breath in the human life cycle, seen through the eyes of three women.

Orlando explains: “It goes from first breath to last breath, and on the way we cover most things — exercise, falling in love, sex, labour, big emotional moments and dying.

“It’s a way of looking at the life span through this kind of filter of breathing, and the way it’s involved with physical effort but also very much involved in our emotions.” The three women — sung by professional singers Rebecca Askew, Anna Dennis and Melanie Pappenheim — discuss breath in a way that is thought-provoking and light-hearted.

An amateur chorus, joins them, consisting largely of people with breathing difficulties, along with carers and nurses. “It’s a real mix,” Orlando says. “They’re rehearsing with a wonderful singing teacher, Liz Hodgson, who does a lot of work with people with breathing difficulties because she believes singing is a big help if you’ve got breathing problems.

“We’ve also got a chorus of girls. So most of the time it’s like a real chamber piece, with just the three main people, but occasionally it expands.”

Directed by Emma Bernard with lighting by Chahine Yavroyan, the piece is minimalist in approach, which helps to focus attention on breathing and the voice.

“It’s really about singing,” says Orlando. “It’s also partly about talking and there’s also some strange vocal sounds going on because I’ve always been really interested in that, the spectrum between singing and speaking. And of course it’s relevant to something like the voice because breathing is naturally about making sounds like gasping, sighing and so on, so it’s inevitably included in this piece.

“That’s why there’s no instrumental backing, because it’s all coming from the voice.”

Orlando wrote the piece after spending time at the Churchill Hospital talking to respiratory patients, medical staff and researchers, with particular help and guidance from John Stradling, the Emeritus Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the Churchill.

“He very generously explained what was going on and gave me some background knowledge. I spent three days in the respiratory department and it was just fascinating. I met various nurses and several cystic fibrosis patients, and it was touching to see people coping with this debilitating disease.”

BREATHe will take place at the North Wall, which Orlando feels is the ideal space. “It’s a beautiful venue, very well equipped and it’s got fantastic acoustics. It’s a great place because it needs to be quite intimate.

“You’re being asked to hear quite small sounds sometimes, and I think it will work very well.”

The Breath Festival
Various venues
Saturday, various times
Visit ocmevents.org and museums.ox.ac.uk