Manchester Collective: Night Works

What happens when friends and strangers come together en masse to move, to listen, to dance together? Night Works is all about that beautiful collision.

Feel a rush of energy as we’re plunged into the heady darkness of 90s club life through the lens of Manchester film-maker Graham Hector, while the collective battle it out on stage in Steve Reich’s punchy Double Sextet.

Reich has always opened his window to the sound of the street, taking in the frenetic energy and cultural collage of New York. Fast, slow, fast: Double Sextet is a soundtrack to the city that never sleeps.

We’re dropped into another metropolis with Hannah Peel’s mesmerising Neon, which opens with the rush hour bustle of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station. In this nocturnal vision, the city offers bright possibilities but also the anonymity of sinking into shadows. Its restless pace threatens to leave old ways of life behind, like the dying craft of neon signs. But nostalgia has the power to capture what would otherwise be ephemeral.

Amidst the haze and bustle, pop culture and classical sounds spar in a brand-new work by artist and composer Jacob Samuel.

For ten years, Manchester Collective has been uniting artists and curious listeners. In Night Works, they revisit some of their favourite works through new eyes and ears, looking back to how they got here and who came before them, and making a declaration of what they take forward.

Jacob Samuel’s new work is commissioned by Manchester Collective with support from the Vaughan Williams Foundation.

Manchester Collective is a Southbank Centre Resident Artist for Classical Music: Spring/Summer 2027.

Tickets from: £29