Jonny Greenwood's eight-hour organ piece reaches Kilkenny and Essen

Jonny Greenwood's eight-hour organ work had its German premiere on 24 August, when James McVinnie and Eliza McCarthy played it at the Ruhrtriennale festival in the Evangelische Kirche am Markt, in the Essen district of Katernberg. On 9 August the two gave its Irish premiere at St Canice's Cathedral during Kilkenny Arts Festival.

The piece is called X Years of Reverb, and the X is the age of the building it is played in. In Essen it was 124 Years of Reverb. In Kilkenny it was 740 Years, billed by the festival as one continuous eight-hour performance. The first performance, at the Octagon Chapel in Norwich in May 2024, was 268 Years.

Faber Music, his publisher, lists the next performance for 28 February 2026 at Manchester Cathedral, as 605 Years of Reverb, part of a Hallé focus on Greenwood's music, with McVinnie joined by the organist Anna Lapwood.

McVinnie and McCarthy take turns of an hour each, and over the eight hours the audience sees the light in the building go from day to night. The first and last chords hold notes pitched below and above what the ear can hear.

In his note on the work, Greenwood says he wrote it to summon all the music, voices and sounds that have ever filled the air and soaked into the walls of a room¹. He traces it to the organs of several medieval churches in Italy, and to Indian classical music, where new notes come into an improvised solo very slowly. The organ is the lungs and voice of any building where it is installed.³

Performances