A recital on Emily Bronte’s piano, a play about the Brontes written by Blake Morrison and a haunting sound installation re-creating the literary sisters’ letters are all part of a spring/summer contemporary arts programme at Haworth’s Bronte Parsonage Museum.

Other highlights include comedy troupe Lip Service performing cult-classic Bronte spoof Withering Looks, and the second Bronte Festival of Women’s Writing; a weekend of readings, talks, workshops and family events featuring an appearance by Moira Buffini, screenwriter of a new film of Jane Eyre, to be released later this year.

An innovative sound installation by artist Catherine Bertola, called To Be Forever Known, is a response to the Bronte sisters’ letters and writings.

Using scientific methods of revealing the resonant harmonies and tones of architectural spaces, she has captured sounds of the Parsonage, recorded with extracts from the sisters’ letters spoken aloud.

The recordings have been played and re-recorded repeatedly into the space, until the words become whispers.

The resulting sounds will bring the sisters’ thoughts and feelings once again into the house.

The artist will also curate a series of evenings called ‘Conversaziones’, inspired by gatherings held by Victorians at home to discuss topics of the day.

Also visiting Haworth will be writer and Skipton-born journalist Blake Morrison who is writing a play combining the work of the Brontes and Chekov.

Visitors will be able to wander around the Parsonage accompanied by music chosen from the Brontes’ music books, played on Emily Bronte’s cabinet piano.

It will be only the second time that the piano, restored last year, has been played in more than 150 years.

Writers Lucasta Miller and Jane Robinson discuss the role of radical women, from Bluestockings to Suffragettes, who like the Brontes, transcended perceived ideas of femininity, while Parsonage collections manager Ann Dinsdale takes visitors through the domestic rituals of an early 19th household to discover how the Bronte sisters would have occupied their time outside of writing.

More information about the new contemporary arts programme, which runs from April to September 2011, is available on (01535) 640188.

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