A double bill of music and conversation with Nikos Baroutsakis and Fran & Flora, exploring the musical culture of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. For the first half of the evening, Nikos will be reprising his Marchland matinee for us - a programme of work from Armenia, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia. For the second half, cellist and violinist Fran & Flora will present an extended version of their Marchland programme, their distinctive music-making interspersed with anecdotes and insights from their musicological travels in the Balkans.

Bardos Band’s The Oak of Two Greens is a melting pot of rare and deeply-affecting music, woven around an ancient folktale. Using voice, harp, medieval fiddle, gittern, flutes and symphony, they explore the legendary origins of Irish music. For this double bill, we’ve paired them with KultNett’s The Sound of the Arctic, who will be presenting an extended version of their Marchland programme. This promises to be a fascinating evening of music and storytelling from Northern Europe, juxtaposing the living traditions of a borderland culture with exquisite reconstructions of a shared musical heritage.

Inspired by Ignacio Evangelista’s photography sequence After Schengen, we brought together three artists to create an interdisciplinary event exploring notions of the vanishing border. In front of a screening of his work, Ignacio will be talking about his fascination with Europe’s disused border posts. His talk will be interwoven with poems by Hungarian-born poet George Szirtes, written in response to Ignacio’s images and read by George himself. The whole will be framed by a unique performance of musical fragments and improvisations devised by violist Shiry Rashkovsky. A truly international collaboration that encapsulates perfectly the spirit of Marchland.

Our double bills, juxtaposing programmes from elsewhere in the Marchland season, are designed to create resonances and spark debate - and, of course, to make for a really good night out! This one has a truly epic sweep. Kultnett give us an extended version of their Sound of the Arctic programme, with even more folk music, storytelling and documentary theatre-making from beyond the Arctic Circle. Preceding them, another chance to see our specially commissioned piece Before and After Schengen; a multi-media collaboration between photographer Ignacio Evangelista, poet George Szirtes, and violist Shiry Rashkovsky. Expect to find yourselves pondering the ephemeral and often arbitrary nature of borders.

Norway’s KultNett bring together some of the foremost folk musicians and storytellers from beyond the Arctic Circle to examine the history of the peoples of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Sápmi, the land of the Sámi people. Storytelling, a fast and furious fiddle and the traditional ‘joik’ of the Sámi are interwoven to create a performance that explores and interrogates the dynamics of cultural and ethnic hegemony in the Nordic region of Europe. Adapted especially for Marchland and illustrated by a multi-media presentation, this is a truly immersive experience; a rare insight into a rich and vibrant borderland culture from the Northernmost reaches of Europe.