Sounds of Birmingham
A New Dawn Chorus for Birmingham
Sounds of Birmingham is a new BMA project exploring the relationship between sound, people, place and the natural world, inspired by the extraordinary work and archive of Birmingham-born natural sound recordist Martyn Stewart.
Martyn grew up in Birmingham and began recording the natural world in the Bluebell Woods in Bartley Green. As a young man, he would lie on his back and simply listen to the world around him. It was there that he made one of his first recordings, the song of a blackbird, beginning a journey that has taken him around the globe for more than 60 years.
Today, Martyn is regarded as one of the world’s leading natural sound recordists, archivists and activists. Through The Listening Planet, he has created an extraordinary archive containing 97,000 sound files and more than 35,000 hours of recordings, documenting over 3,500 species alongside oceans, weather systems, landscapes and habitats.
At the heart of that work is something very simple: listening.
Bringing Martyn’s sounds home
In September 2026, BMA brought Martyn back to Birmingham for the launch of Sounds of Birmingham at the National Trust’s Birmingham Back to Backs.
We invited people to stop, listen and hear Birmingham in a way they may never have heard it before.
Martyn created a special Birmingham soundscape using recordings he made in the city more than 50 years ago: its streets, markets, people, wildlife and everyday sounds. Some are instantly recognisable. Others have disappeared completely from the city’s soundscape.
Working with Angus Deuchars, and with technology, equipment and expertise from d&b audiotechnik, ATC and Richard Griffiths of Event Craft, the recordings were transformed into an immersive spatial sound experience throughout the Back to Backs courtyard.
Oboist Melinda Maxwell of Birmingham Contemporary Music Group performed live in response to the recordings, adding another layer to the soundscape.
None of Martyn’s original recordings were altered. The sounds were allowed to exist as he captured them, providing a remarkable record of a city, its people and its natural environment at a particular moment in time.
Sounds of Birmingham launch, Birmingham Back to Backs, September 2026.
A New Dawn Chorus for Birmingham
The launch was the beginning, not the end.
We are now working with Martyn and our partners to develop A New Dawn Chorus for Birmingham, bringing recordings from The Listening Planet archive together with new sounds captured across Birmingham today.
We want to explore what happens when we listen closely to the places around us. What does Birmingham sound like now? What has disappeared? What has survived? What new sounds have emerged? And what can listening tell us about our changing communities, neighbourhoods and natural environment?
The ambition is to work with communities across Birmingham to record the sounds of their own neighbourhoods, parks and green spaces, while inviting musicians, composers and sound artists to respond creatively to Martyn’s archive and the new recordings we make.
Over time, we want to build a new sound portrait of Birmingham: our own dawn chorus of people, place, music and nature.
What comes next
This is a project we want other people to help shape.
We want to hear from musicians and sound artists interested in responding to the archive; communities who want to explore and record the changing sounds of their neighbourhoods; and people working across nature, climate, research, health and wellbeing who can help us understand more about why listening matters.
We also want to work with cultural organisations, schools, universities, funders and other partners who can help us take the work into new places and introduce new generations to Martyn’s extraordinary archive.
Alongside Sounds of Birmingham, we are exploring an even bigger ambition: whether Birmingham could become a permanent home for The Listening Planet archive and create a lasting legacy for Martyn’s life’s work in the city where it began.
If you or your organisation can see a place for yourself in this work, we’d love to hear from you.
Contact Jez Collins: jez@birminghammusicarchive.com