In a powerful reimagining of British folk, genre-crossing composers Emily Levy and Matthew Bourne collaborate this summer in a new show, Mercury Songs. Digging into Britain’s long, rich tradition of folk music, the show features a five-piece ensemble, telling the unsung stories of important historical figures, many of whom are women.
Emily and Matthew have both lived either side of Rombald’s Moor, West Yorkshire, where both disused and regenerated mills dot the landscape, and threads of Yorkshire’s industrial past are woven into the fabric of present lives. The project gains its inspiration not only from folklore and tales of Yorkshire, but from the women of this landscape, who lived and worked hard, grueling lives within factories and works, and whose suffering and sacrifice have been historically unrecognised in recent memory. Mercury Songs addresses more nuanced issues surrounding the representation and empowerment of women, becoming a musical catalyst for important dialogue.
We spoke to Emily Levy about her inspiration, research and creation of the show.
I’ve sung folk songs for as long as I can remember, but a few years back I began questioning the powerless role of women in these songs; fair young maiden, tragic victim or brazen seducer. I started looking for stories which bucked this trend and discovered a wealth of counter-narratives. Songs of empowered woman who take their destiny into their own hands, who dress as men to go to sea, who take on the role of highwaymen to challenge a lover, and mothers who defy convention to ensure survival of their children.
“I’ve sung folk songs for as long as I can remember, but a few years back I began questioning the powerless role of women in these songs”
– Emily Levy
Matthew Bourne and I have worked together over many years and found a fertile meeting between our different sonic worlds in this project. We began exploring and recording these traditional tunes and tales, whilst getting stuck into the messy, suspenseful, dramatic places they conjured. But this felt like a beginning of a journey, not the end. The obvious next step was to create new work inspired by a real person in more recent past. We narrowed our search to West Yorkshire, and Bradford specifically because we were building this piece as part of the PRSF New Music Biennial for Bradford City of Culture 2025. And to our huge delight, we came upon the life and work of Julia Varley – we had found our real-life folk hero!
Julia (1871-1952) lived a bold and inspiring life, fighting tirelessly for the rights of women and workers, through Union work and Suffragette movements. Whilst poring through her archives in Hull University, I was struck over and over by how Julia’s life read like a collage of the empowered folk tales I’d found in my previous research. She too dressed in disguise several times to go undiscovered as she documented the harsh inequalities of life in industrialised Britain, she went on epic journeys to live life in the shoes of hawkers and wanderers to expose their harsh treatment. She was imprisoned for her protests as a suffragette and fearlessly straddled class divides in a bitterly divided nation.
Julia Varley leading the Cornish Clay Workers Strike in 1913, Hull University Archives
Mercury Songs is a combination of all these things, inspired by storytelling, our collective musical past, and perhaps most importantly, the sounds and voices of the musicians who make up the ensemble: Nick Rasle (voice, guitar), Aby Vulliamy (voice, viola), Michael Bardon (cello), Matthew Bourne (piano, moog, cello) and myself (voice, electronics). Between us, Matt and I have worked with these amazing musicians in various projects over the years and we were thrilled to be able to bring together such unique and powerful voices into an ensemble for Mercury Songs. We all relate in different ways to Julia’s story and life – and have built a musical world which we hope honours her. In making the piece our aim is to fully embrace the spirit of fearlessness, protest, gratitude and empowerment that motivated Julia. We can’t wait to bring it to Wiltons and then take it on the road all around the UK in 26-27!
– Emily Levy
Mercury Songs comes to Spitalfields Music Festival at Wilton’s Music Hall on Tuesday 7th July 2026.
