‘Voix Celeste’ (Heavenly Voices) is an organ stop consisting of either one or two ranks of pipes slightly out of tune, to produce a beating effect when combined with a normally tuned rank.

“I love this description and first learned of it when I was working with a deconstructed church organ during a residency in Johnson, Vermont. Then, during the on/off lockdowns, it struck me that our fate felt a bit like the child’s game of musical chairs where you must land on a seat when the music stops in order to be safe”.

In this installation landing on a seat will not provide safety but sounds of nature and music related to birdsong. An uplifting sound for us all, we became more acutely aware of birdsong and the sounds of nature when everything else quietened down. Birdsong has featured in the work of composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Oliver Messiaen. All of these elements are included in this installation.

Maureen Jordan is an award-winning artist from Northern Ireland, currently based in Folkestone. Her career in the arts included working with touring theatre companies; in artist development and at Arts Council England supporting many and diverse artists and performers. In 2009 she began developing her own artistic practice, inspired by Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture in 2008. Reclaimed materials and found objects used in her work include vintage furniture and ‘found sound’.