Ports Fest 2023 finale to feature a volcanic show from the Multi-Story Orchestra in a car park

With enormous beats bouncing off concrete car park walls, this promises to be an unmissable eruption of sound through an amassed percussion and vocal ensemble.

The Volcano combines the music of Philip Glass and Nebojsa Zivkovic with completely new pieces created and improvised in the performance, and also features a host of young, local musicians.Orchestra member and professional percussionist Delia Stevens is part of the project.

‘As a percussionist you're really like a “sound creator”,’ says Delia, ‘it's a phrase [percussionist extraordinaire] Evelyn Glennie used when she was talking about the art of listening. Quite often we're copying something from real life and copying it into music.

‘Percussion is kind of the oldest instrument in the world and the youngest in terms of the classical world. It's very interesting to then apply it to a concept from real life – for example a volcano!

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‘There's a sound art, it's called soundscape ecology, and it talks about the different types of sound. The sound of the world is "geophony"; there's also “biophony”, the sound of creatures; and “athropophony”, the sound made by man.

‘It's really fascinating to try and tap into that sound world to create this massive sensory experience. Like a volcano isn't just sound, it's the rumbling – the bass drum vibrating you, and the explosion with the percussion. It's a beautiful task to try and convey something with the power of sound, and that's where percussion really shines.

‘It's interesting to think about the world in terms of sound because we're usually so visual – we're viewing the world through our ears instead of through our eyes.’

And Delia loves how this piece turns the normal orchestra hierarchy on its head.

‘Even composers when they write for percussion, because it's such a young artform, they don't really know what the instrument is capable of and the repertoire is. Quite often if you're a percussionist you'll be asked to play Steve Reich, but it may be missing a trick because there's so much amazing music, especially written by percussionists.

‘The main piece is written by a composer from Serbia called Zivkovic who is an incredible percussionist. He wrote this piece about a volcano – the first movement is so explosive, the second one is like the calm between the storm on the vibraphone and then the third one is taiko drumming from Japan which is noisy and physical.

‘It's one of the first orchestras which has asked me, what I, as a player, want to play? It's so exciting.

‘We're often kind of the icing on the cake, adding texture and decoration, so to reverse that and to make percussion the core of the music and to ask them to come up with the programme is really going to allow the artform to bloom, rather than it be someone else's impression of it.

‘It's very exciting because it doesn't feel like you have to conform – instead the orchestra is bending towards you.’

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Delia is keen to stress that while young people are involved, this is not a ‘children’s concert’.

‘We also have this team of young creatives, teenagers from Peckham [where the MSO are based] who are really into music, and they're part of the artistic planning as well. They get a say in that planning.

‘A lot of the time when I've been involved in outreach work before, it's felt like an add-on rather than something that's integrated – this is a collaboration which makes the whole thing better.

‘This doesn't feel like a children's concert just because it has children in it. It more feels like something that is even more epic because it has all the energy of the different types of people who are in it, and I think that's really hard to get right.

‘It doesn't feel like having them there is to tick a box – they're integral to the creative process and that makes it stronger. They've been there from the beginning.’

The concert will also feature a choir of 30 youngsters from Portsmouth.

‘We can't recreate a volcano with it being epic,’ adds Delia, ‘we need the energy that these young people give, and they really go for it. It's amazing!’

As a professional percussionist Delia has spent most of her career in concert halls and theatres, she has relished the challenges of playing in a car park.

‘It's an instant culture change,’ she says, ‘everyone can access a car park. For me it's very liberating. I feel like being in the car park, strange as this sounds, if I want it allows me to run around the audience and start a conga line or something like that, I can. In a concert hall, that would be insane.

‘The audience is able to be up close because there isn't a stage – there are all these subtle things which make it an incredibly flexible space.

‘We don't dress up, and the audience doesn't dress up. Sometimes, even as a professional musician I can feel like I have to be on my best behaviour. And that's not right as a musician, particularly as a percussionist, you are physically letting go. Especially if you're playing a piece about a volcano!

‘Music has that power to instantly change the dynamic in a room, and I've seen that so many times.

‘Performing in a car park, it's almost like you're playing the infrastructure of that city and the landscape. It feels very different everywhere we play.

‘A concert hall is a beautiful thing, and it sounds incredible in there, but it's almost like an art gallery. Of course you do get art outside of art galleries and I suppose this is the sonic form of that.’

The Volcano is at Isambard Brunel Car Park in Portsmouth on Sunday, July 2 at 6pm. Tickets £12. Go to portsfest.co.uk