A year-long piece of music harnessing the city’s sounds and environment will help celebrate Sunderland’s new-found Music City status.
Commissioned by Sunderland Music City and produced by Peter Brewis, Ed
Carter, Tim Shaw and Becky Allen, SonOrbitUs is a year-long musical
composition which is, in essence, created by the city itself.
Music will be made in real-time using a range of data – including live weather
information (wind speed, temperature, air pressure), traffic levels, pedestrian
footfall, air quality and rainfall using Sunderland Smart Cities data.
The name, SonOrbitUs, is a reference to the Latin words ‘orbītus’ meaning
circular, and ‘son’, meaning sound – i.e. a circular sound.
Taking 365 days to fully complete, the piece of music will use the flow of data
coming from the city and its people throughout the year to adjust and adapt
the sounds you can hear.
SonOrbitUs is led by Sunderland musician Peter Brewis, perhaps best known
as a member of Field Music and Gateshead-based Ivor Novella-nominated
composer and sound artist, Ed Carter.
The pair are working in collaboration with Tim Shaw, an artist specialising in
sound, light and communication based at Culture Lab Newcastle and Becky
Allen, a researcher at the University of Sunderland with an interest in data
sonification.
“Over the course of the year the changing environment and habits of our
city’s population will change the music. The noises and environment of the city will make the music – and you can listen to it in real time online via the Sunderland Music City website.”
The initial phase for the project has involved collecting data from around the
city, which are then converted into sounds and noises.
For example, glass bottles were blown, struck and ‘corked’ to create a range
of textures, a nod to Sunderland’s glass-making heritage.
“Sunderland has such a strong and historic association with glass, we thought
we could build some instruments using Sunderland bottles”, explains Ed
Carter.
Most of the musical sounds you can hear in SonOrbitUs come from noises or
actions recorded in the city of Sunderland.
“You might be able to hear a seagull, a mast on a boat, a child walking in The
Bridges, a coal train rolling across the bridge”, explains Peter.
“Converting the data into a model that creates its own music is the most
technically challenging part of the project, needing help from experts,”
explains Peter.
“Tim Shaw and Becky Allen are both experts in data sonification and are
helping to build the instruments to make this possible!’
SonOrbitUs began streaming on Friday 17 October via the musiccity.uk
website and can be listened to live until September 2026.
The composition will be split into seasonal movements with new musical ideas
brought in as the seasons change.
You can also create music yourself, using the SonOrbitUs Music Maker, which
will be situated in front of the Sunderland Music City office in The Fire Station
building.
Wave your hands in front of the webcam to manipulate the sounds yourself
and help compose the music of SonOrbitUs.
You can also scan the QR code in The Fire Station to listen to SonOrbitUs via
musiccity.uk.
SonOrbitUs has been developed in collaboration with Sunderland Music City
and Smart City and funded by Arts Council England.
The Sunderland Year of Music builds on Sunderland’s official designation as a
global Music City in January 2025, recognising years of grassroots
development and cultural success and ambition.
The formal recognition by the Music Cities Network places Sunderland among
a global powerhouse of cities like Berlin, Manchester and Sydney, committed
to harnessing music as a tool for social and economic transformation, and
marks a bold new chapter in the city’s creative future.
The Sunderland Year of Music is supported using public funding by Arts
Council England.