Belfast-based contemporary music group Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble will perform in Warsaw this Friday (4 July), as part of the UK/Poland Season 2025, supported by the British Council.
The performance at the AżTak Festival of Contemporary Music, is a key moment in a year-long international collaboration with Warsaw’s Hashtag Ensemble, titled Against Adversity. Together, these pioneering groups are exploring how composers respond to conflict, constraint, and cultural identity through bold and thought-provoking new music.
The Warsaw concert will feature works by Greg Caffrey, Amy Rooney, and Ryan Molloy, each reflecting the festival’s 2025 theme of Contemplation — music that is deeply personal, reflective, and rooted in lived experience.
Speaking about the project’s origins, Hard Rain’s Artistic Director Aisling Agnew said: “We were thinking about how composers here in Northern Ireland have started to reflect differently on conflict - especially in the years since the Troubles. Not necessarily just political conflict, but the everyday struggles people face, and how we break free from those. It’s about resilience, identity, and transformation.”
The partnership with Hashtag Ensemble grew out of early links with the Polish contemporary music scene and has since evolved into a fully embedded collaboration.
“There’s a real kinship between us and Hashtag,” Aisling continued. “They’re experimental, collaborative, and they began the same year we did. We didn’t want this to be just two groups sharing a stage - we embedded musicians into each other’s ensembles to create something more genuinely shared.”
Earlier this year, the collaboration saw two acclaimed performances in Belfast. Songs of Travel, an immersive audiovisual concert, addressed themes of migration and climate change, while Pierrette, marking International Women’s Day, showcased cross-border works by six women composers from Northern Ireland and Poland, exploring identity, gender, and representation.
“We wanted to reflect what Belfast is today - how much it’s changed,” Aisling said. “The music ranges from tense and unsettling to joyful and uplifting."
Reflecting on past performances in Poland, she added: “There’s a seriousness about contemporary music there. Audiences really listen. That kind of cultural dialogue - respectful, attentive, honest - is what this whole project is about.”
The final stage of the collaboration will take place this September at the Warsaw Autumn Festival, where Hard Rain will present Evolutionary Environments, combining multimedia work featuring live performance merged with field recordings and ambient soundscapes. This programme aims to challenge our perception of ourselves and the world that surrounds us, urging us to consider our existence, in how we relate to each other, and understand the conditions of our society.
“This project isn’t just about music,” Aisling said. “It’s about opening space for shared understanding — showing how different people reflect on adversity,and finding common ground through art.”
This marks Hard Rain’s first partnership with the British Council, and forms part of their growing international programme, following recent performances in Germany, Chile, China, and across the UK.
Jonathan Stewart, Director of British Council Northern Ireland, commented: “Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble consistently brings ambitious, boundary-pushing work to audiences both locally and globally. Their collaboration with Hashtag Ensemble is a powerful example of how artists can come together to reflect on challenging themes and create meaningful cultural exchange. We’re proud to support this important work as part of the UK/Poland Season.”
The UK/Poland Season is a joint initiative by the British Council, the Polish Cultural Institute in London, and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw, presenting over 100 dynamic events across both countries in 2025.
To learn more about the UK/Poland Season, visit: https://www.britishcouncil.pl/en/programmes/uk-poland-season-2025
For details on Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble and their upcoming work, visit: https://www.hardrainensemble.com/
For details on Hashtag Ensemble and their upcoming work, visit: https://hashtag-ensemble.org/
The British Council continues to foster connection, understanding and trust between the UK and the world through education, arts, and English language teaching. Learn more about their work in Northern Ireland at https://nireland.britishcouncil.org/ or follow them on social media.