When: 7.30pm on Thursday 11 June 2025
Where: Hallé at St Michael’s, 36-38 George Leigh Street, Ancoats, Manchester M4 5DG

We’re delighted to welcome Poppy Ackroyd back to Manchester!

Acclaimed composer and pianist Poppy Ackroyd returns with Liminal, her intimate new album released 12 June via One Little Independent Records. Written and recorded during a period of profound upheaval and transition, it marks a return to the core of Ackroyd’s practice, bringing piano and violin back together.

For the first time since 2019’s Feathers, Ackroyd reunites these two instruments exclusively, with every sound on the album drawn from piano and violin alone. Melody, harmony, rhythm and texture are all extracted from the physical bodies of the instruments themselves, from bowed and plucked strings to percussive elements. Working within these limitations remains central to her creative process.

Liminal was written unusually quickly for Ackroyd, composed over a three-month period in which the core structures and musical ideas were laid out. Recording took place shortly after, once she had moved into a new studio space. Piano and violin improvisations were captured alongside scored material, then carefully edited over time. This process of sifting through improvisations to find small, human moments has always been part of Ackroyd’s approach, but here she chose to leave more of the raw material intact, preserving its cathartic qualities.

‘In the last three years everyone I loved most in the world needed me, all at once,’ she explains. ‘There has been new life and death, heartbreak and many other things that are not my stories to tell. I have also moved across the country to a part of the world I have never lived in before.’

Although the album emerged from an exceptionally difficult time in her life, it is guided by a quiet sense of resolve. Ackroyd describes listening to the album while running and feeling herself almost dancing along to it, discovering a joy that was not always present while writing. ‘I had such a chaotic few years, but the only way to cope was to allow things to be messy,’ she says. ‘Embracing the messy and imperfect but still getting things done. I decided to apply this approach to my music making and I found that I still maintain the same attention to detail but without the pressure, and I fell in love with making music again in a whole new way.’

The album was created in close proximity to nature, another first for Ackroyd. Her studio now sits within her home, backing onto ancient woodland. This environment subtly permeates the record, particularly in the quieter tracks where space and resonance play a central role. The cover artwork reflects this setting; a photograph taken by Ackroyd from her studio window on Christmas morning, showing mist hanging in the valley beyond.

As with her previous releases, Ackroyd wrote, performed, recorded, mixed, and produced the album herself, with mastering by Matouš Godík and layout and design by Ruth Keating. Ackroyd has long taken an active role in shaping the visual identity of her records, designing, or creating the artwork for most of her releases. With Liminal, she contributes a cover photograph for the first time.

Liminal opens with ‘In The Mist’, a piece that sets a tone of subtle movement and careful restraint, as gentle piano figures emerge slowly, suspended in space. This atmosphere flows seamlessly into ‘Shimmer’, where repeated patterns create a glistening surface. Soft violin lines hover and blur the edges of ‘Continuum’, a track that develops through gradual layering, with interlocking piano motifs and sustained violin tones creating a feeling of forward momentum.

The music of Liminal breathes and expands, drawing attention to small flourishes in texture and dynamics. ‘For Those Who Wait’ leans into patience and repetition, allowing notes to circle gently, accumulating emotional weight through persistence rather than dramatic change.

The return of the violin is central to the album’s expressive power. Having not played it extensively for several years, Ackroyd found the experience of layering string parts unexpectedly moving. This is especially evident in ‘The Unknown’, where sweeping violin lines rise and fall against a piano foundation, and in ‘Drift’, where flowing string passages create a sense of gracefulness. These tracks highlight the contrast between the piano’s percussive, grounding nature and the violin’s ability to float freely.

“There is this amazing feeling you get when you play with another musician that you know really really well, but when you are playing alongside yourself it’s quite powerful,” she explains. “With the violin you have control over the whole length of the note in a way that you don’t when you’re playing piano. It feels like you can say more. Like singing.”

As the album progresses, moments of rhythmic intensity and release come into sharper focus. Closing track, ‘Between Two Worlds’, brings the album full circle, blending introspective piano writing with expansive violin lines.

That wider world continues to resonate through her work. Ackroyd’s music has featured in countless documentaries and dance productions, including with New York City Ballet, and in theatre, where the National Theatre used ‘The Calm Before’ as the opening music for The Seagull. Her collaboration with Ainslie Henderson, Shackle, won Best British Film at the London International Animation Festival.

In 2025, Ackroyd released Notes On Water, a collaborative project completed during her father Norman Ackroyd’s final months and released shortly after his passing. The work combined Ackroyd’s music with her father’s final etching and served as both a tribute and a means of processing loss through shared creative language.

At its heart, Liminal is about endurance and transformation. ‘There’s a euphoric feeling after doing something you’re scared of,’ Ackroyd reflects. ‘I feel like I’ve been broken in a way I never thought I could be, but I’m also stronger than I ever thought I could be.’

‘Poppy Ackroyd can conjure whole worlds of sound out of the barest essentials’ – Stereogum

‘On par with neo-classical giants Nils Frahm, Max Richter and Hauschka’ – MOJO

This concert takes place in Hallé at St Michael’s – a former Roman Catholic church, which was founded in 1859 and became the heart of the Little Italy Community in Ancoats.

This is a 14+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

Book tickets now.

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