NYX and Laura Misch perform music from City of Trees, exploring Epping Forest’s ancient, symbiotic relationship with humans and London. This performance will take place in the round, with large-scale projected films of Oak, Beech and Hornbeam pollards from Epping Forest created by Matthew Rosier.

Over millennia, Epping Forest provided London with wood for its fires, and in return, we nurtured its trees for the next generation. The biodiverse woodland that emerged from this relationship was one dominated by Oak, Beech and Hornbeam. Many of these trees were pollarded, their branches chopped back periodically to provide a renewable crop of firewood and extend the life of the tree. The fantastical forms of Epping’s pollards today are the result of hundreds of human hands over hundreds of years.

Formed from live improvisations inside the forest itself - playing inside ancient Oak monoliths, jamming along with Hornbeams, parading binaural rings around a Woodcutter’s glade and tapping into old Beech lopping rituals. Raw saxophone and vocals sing out as a call and response between human and forest - breathing through decaying wood, crying bell chants with branches and bark.