Super Slow Way: A Rhapsody to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal

A celebration of 200 years of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

Poet Ian McMillanand composer Ian Stephenshave joined forces to create a new large-scale cantata – this is its first performance.

Clark Rundellconducts massed forces – three soloists (soprano Amanda Roocroft, cellist Jonathan Aasgaardand tabla player Kuljit Bhamra), three choirs (Children’s Voices of Blackburn, Blackburn People’s Choirand Super Slow Way Chamber Choir), three narrators (Ian McMillan, Lisa Parryand  Farmeen Akhtar) and the world-famous Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band.

The piece is a homage to the canal, inspired by McMillan’s poem of the same name. In less than a century, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal revolutionised Pennine Lancashire. The poem captures the contrast between what the canal was – a global super highway and major artery of the Industrial Revolution – to what it is today.