Where is home? For millions of displaced people, this simple question is becoming increasingly difficult to answer. Home can be a place of nurture, safety, and ancestral roots, or a place of oppression, lack of opportunity, and loss. Homes can be lost but also found, regained, rediscovered, and made anew. Our sense of home could be intricately linked with nostalgic memories from childhood, while for musicians, home might be the territory and tactile association with their instrument.

BAILE (“home” in Irish) by Xenia Pestova Bennett brings together personal histories of migration, memory and (be)longing in search of home. Baroque instruments are joined by a tiny toy piano on stage and enveloped with field recordings and spoken word to create an intricate and private dream world of sounds both old and new, humorous and serious, reflective and progressive.

The performers gratefully acknowledge support from the PRS Foundation Beyond Borders scheme on this tour in collaboration with H.I.P.S.T.E.R., Historically Informed Performance Series, Teaching, Education and Research.