London, United Kingdom – It is a sunny day in early April, and a performance is under way in a gleaming concert hall in central London. A gentle crackling and clanking, echoing as if trapped in the hull of a ship, fills the room. These are the sounds of the swaying, creaks and groans of the trees that survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings.
The four singers on stage, all men in their 70s and 80s and dressed in black, start to riff along, adding tongue clicks and tut-tuts to the music of the trees, some pressing a finger to what looks like a large button on their throat. Projected onto a large screen behind them are ethereal images of the arboreal survivors.
