FELDMAN & BECKETT: WORDS & MUSIC

Siobhán McSweeney, Jonjo O'Neill, Ensemble 360, George Morton & Vicky Featherstone

Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Monday 18 May 2026, 7.00pm

Tickets:
£23
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s

Past Event
Home› What's on› FELDMAN & BECKETT: WORDS & MUSIC

BECKETT Rockaby (15’)
FELDMAN Why Patterns? (30’)
BECKETT / FELDMAN Words & Music (25’)

‘Siobhán McSweeney brings masterful touch to Beckett’s masterpiece’
The Guardian (on Landmark Productions’ Happy Days)

For one night only, Bafta award-winning Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls, Amandaland, Great Pottery Throw Down and Traitors Ireland) stars in Rockaby, Beckett’s evocative monologue of memory and loss.

Join us for an enthralling evening of theatre, music and a dramatic meeting of the two, with this tribute to playwright Samuel Beckett and composer Morton Feldman.

Visionary titans in their respective artforms, the warm friendship of the composer and playwright resulted in some of the most extraordinary artworks of the 20th century. Their unique collaboration Words & Music features a small group of musicians playing a distinctively taut Feldman score, which becomes a character in the drama, with Siobhán McSweeney playing ‘Words’ and Ensemble 360 ‘Music’, the two servants of ‘Croak’ played by Jonjo O’Neill.

Ensemble 360 will also give a performance of Feldman’s contemplative music for flute, percussion and piano Why Patterns?

Don’t miss your only chance to experience this extraordinary evening of music and drama, directed by Vicky Featherstone (Artistic Director, Royal Court Theatre and Founding Artistic Director, National Theatre of Scotland).

Save 20% when you book for 10 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction. 
Save 10% when you book for 5 or more Music in the Round Sheffield concerts in one transaction. Find out more. 

Feldman & Beckett

Morton Feldman was a composer like no other. He studied with Stefan Wolpe and received guidance from Edgard Varèse. Of key importance were his friendships with John Cage and the New York painters, one of whom, Philip Guston, inspired Feldman to steer a path between the physical and the metaphysical; between concrete reality and subtle refinement; between impact and resonance. He could seem to go out on a limb but he also set great store by beauty. Like most truly original composers, Feldman was like his music: disarmingly transparent and intriguingly enigmatic. He had the confidence and intelligence to savour contradiction.

When I worked as Feldman’s editor in the late Seventies, he once remarked, “For most composers, form follows function; for me, function follows form”. He also told me that the salient aspects of music, for him, were rhythm and form. Rhythmic inventiveness is beguilingly evident in Why Patterns? and remained paramount in the works that followed, even as he moved from form to scale; and towards those extremely long pieces which he regarded as “like evolving things”.

Feldman worked on the music for Words & Music in 1987, just a few months before he died of cancer. His deep respect for Samuel Beckett (who had written the text for his opera, Neither) allowed Feldman to recover the warmth of what many of his admirers would have called a more familiar language: one that was, yes, distinctively painterly.

In an interview recorded in 1987, Feldman commented that Beckett was “a word man, a fantastic word man” and that “I always felt that I was a note man”. I would argue that Feldman and Beckett were also makers of images. The combination of words and notes in Words & Music (paradoxically, a ‘radio play’) is arrestingly dramatic.

Howard Skempton 2026 ©

“a gift of theatre … dazzling ”

WhatsonStage (on Landmark Productions’ Happy Days)

“There isn’t a hint of sentimentality in Vicky Featherstone’s delicately calibrated production of Samuel Beckett’s monologue about mortality.”

The Guardian

About the Artists

Siobhán McSweeney

Siobhán McSweeney is an actress and presenter. Her film and television works include The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), The Fall (2013), No Offence (2015), Derry Girls (since 2018) and Amandaland and as presenter for The Great Pottery Throw Down and Traitors Ireland. She studied acting at Central School of Speech & Drama, London. She also studied at Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris and has worked in theatre all over the UK and Ireland, at The Abbey Theatre, the Lyric Belfast, the Royal Shakespeare Company and others… Read more. 

Jonjo O’Neill

Jonjo O’Neill was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1978. In 1996, he moved to England to study at the Guildford School of acting.

Jonjo is now a well known British stage actor and is Associate Artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company, perhaps best known for his portrayals of Richard III and as Mercutio in the acclaimed Rupert Goold production of Romeo & Juliet.

Onscreen Jonjo is best known for Defiance (2008), Doctor Who (2005), The Assets (2014), The Fall(2013) and Constantine (2014).

Ensemble 360 musicians

Ensemble 360

Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK for the quality and integrity of their performances. Formed in 2005, eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in South Yorkshire with Music in the Round, establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.  Get a glimpse of them in performance here.

The Ensemble 360 musicians share a passion for the music which radiates through each performance. Their enthusiasm, drive and musicality captivate audiences both through the quality of their playing and their engaging spoken introductions. Due to the flexible nature of the group’s line-up the repertoire possibilities are enormous; anything from baroque duos, through classical quartets to new commissions for all eleven players. 

 

George Morton

George Morton is a conductor and arranger based in Sheffield, and is the Musical Director of Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Picture House Orchestra. He specialises in conducting music for film and is in demand across Europe for silent film with orchestra projects.

In the 2025/26 season, George makes his debuts with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra and Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, as well as returning for concerts with Opera North. George is a permanent Guest Conductor of Babylon Orchester Berlin, which he will conduct on multiple occasions across the season. Continuing his strong relationships in Sweden, he returns to conduct Västerås Sinfonietta and Uppsala Chamber Orchestra. In recent seasons, George has conduced concerts with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, London Mozart Players, Northern Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble 360, Sinfonia Smith Square, Vaasa City Orchestra, Roma The Orchestra, Stockholm Concert Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra and the Nordic Chamber Orchestra. Read more here.

Vicky Featherstone1

Vicky Featherstone

Vicky Featherstone is a theatre and artistic director.

She was artistic director of the UK new writing touring theatre company Paines Plough from 1997, founding director of the National Theatre of Scotland in 2004, and the first female artistic director of London’s Royal Court Theatre from 2013 until 2023. Featherstone’s career has been characterised by significant involvement with new writing.