Huddersfield

Available for over a year

Presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch. As the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, hcmf//, celebrates its 40th edition, Sara takes a snapshot of musical life in the West Yorkshire town. Sara meets one of the festival's featured composers, the Canadian-based Linda Catlin Smith, who since listening to records in her childhood has been inspired by the emotional depth of slow music. She also takes stock of the current debate around gender, ethnic and social diversity in new music, with delegates visiting hcmf// and its artistic director, Graham McKenzie, and finds out about the Yorkshire Sound Women Network set up by Liz Dobson at Huddersfield University. To place the festival in context and explore some of the wider music-making in the Huddersfield area, Sara travels a couple of miles out of town, to the Colne Valley home of local folk duo O'Hooley and Tidow. She also visits Hoot Creative Arts, a local music and health charity whose projects have included making new music for string quartet with dementia sufferers and their carers, and hears what Kirklees Council is doing to boost creativity and local engagement with music.