The Tale of the Mountain Builder is a seven-part fairy-tale audio drama set across the city. At seven  locations, children’s and youth choirs will present site-specific  compositions and performance interventions that together form  a coherent whole. Each has grown out of cooperation between  the choirs and invited composers and performers, working under  the direction of their conductors. Together, they crown months  of effort, research and experiment conducted both in rehearsal  rooms and within the living fabric of the capital.

Bringing a fairy-tale world to life at selected sites in Warsaw,  the audio drama continues Spacee®opera’s exploration of the borderlands between city and nature. We listen closely to the sounds  of the natural world and to the soundscape of the built urban  environment. Over the centuries, human activity has brought  nature under its sway; yet in unexpected places nature repeatedly  makes its presence felt. Some of its manifestations result from  human intervention, while others arise through natural processes  by which human-made environments are gradually reclaimed by  nature, if only on a microscopic scale. Many people dream of  moving to the woods; meanwhile, animals are increasingly making cities their home. Where these two worlds meet, compelling  stories emerge—in music as well as in words.

In The Tale of the Mountain Builder, we conjure a fantasy of spectacular structures rising amid the wild. We contemplate cities  springing up among dense forests, rivers shaping human settlements, and mountains of glass raised by extraordinary machines. One day in September, the Mountain Builder’s caravan will set  out across contemporary Warsaw, following a route through  familiar places we pass every day, where the human and the natural coexist. The journey invites us to consider how essential it is to  live alongside nature, which inhabited the sites of our settlements  long before skyscrapers appeared. Can the music of the city ever  be complete if birdsong and the rustling of leaves fall silent?

Amadeusz Nosal