Eleanor Hooper & Kate Griffin
Musical partnership behind Sunshines of a Fallen Tree and more
Eleanor Hooper (Pif-Paf) and Katie Griffin (Mishra) create immersive musical worlds, weaving together layers of vocal harmonies, field recordings, and contemporary folk instrumentation. Their work evolves through their shared experience of walking, singing and being in specific landscapes, and searching for a sense of belonging between people, place, and the more than human world. Together, they craft work that invites audiences into moments of stillness, wonder, and deep listening.
Their creative journey began with Pif-Paf’s immersive sound and light installation Sunshines on a Fallen Tree (2022); responding to Ash Dieback. The composition follows a three part requiem moving through grief and loss to hope and then regrowth. Complex organic vocal layering punctuated with synthetic and modulated vocals move symbiotically with a classical score played out on old piano, enriched by field recordings of dawn and dusk chorus, calls of Tawny owls, the Great spotted Woodpecker and ash leaves hissing in the wind.
This was followed by Echoes of Glass (Pif-Paf 2023), a sculpture and composition with human connection to place at its core. Eleanor and Kate explored the living memory of The Catcliffe Glass Cone in the village of Catcliffe in South Yorkshire England – the oldest surviving structure of its type in Western Europe. Through conversations and workshops with the local community and Beatson Clarke – the remaining glass making industry in Rotherham – they composed three tracks for the installation. The tracks feature vocals, recordings of the furnaces and glass making process at Beatson Clarke, pitched glass tones and earthy banjo melodies.
Their most recent collaboration And Breathe (Pif-Paf 2025), continues their exploration of how sound can shape connection and awareness, through a meditative reflection on breath, rhythm. Written in dorian mode, a scale often used for sacred music, the harmonic structure shifts ambiguously and avoids a musical sense of home, creating a space open to the audience’s interpretation. This piece develops their use of vocal layering, surrounding audiences with luscious pads of harmonies whilst inviting them to play with digital processing through activating sensors within the sculpture.
Eleanor Hooper is a performance artist, singer, and co-director of Pif Paf, a renowned outdoor theatre company known for its visually striking and emotionally resonant work. Eleanor’s practice spans music, theatre, and visual storytelling, transforming everyday spaces into places of imagination and connection. Over the last twenty years, she has co-created large-scale community performances for thousands of participants and directed works such as Toast, an interactive journey through seasons, stories, and song, and Celestial Sound Cloud, an installation that turns audience movement into light and sound. Her installations and performances have toured to venues and festivals including Glastonbury, WOMAD, Turner Contemporary, Norwich Minster, and the National Theatre. Alongside this, Eleanor leads outdoor wellbeing projects such as Waymaking, guiding community groups through forest bathing, song, and landscape connection in the Staffordshire Moorlands. Her work continually explores how communal voice and embodied presence can foster healing, connection, and joy in both public and intimate spaces.
Kate Griffin is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, visual artist and experienced collaborator. With roots in the UK folk tradition she has toured internationally and released three studio albums with her award winning global folk ensemble Mishra, most recently featuring acclaimed Indian Classical vocalist Deepa Shakthi. Her work with Mozambican artist Matchume Zango celebrates a new cross-cultural collaboration between banjo and timbila, whilst bringing infectious joy to audiences across the UK. Through collaborations such as these she honed her compositional approach, most recently composing for Regents Park Open Air Theatre’s production of the Secret Garden (2024). Alongside composing and performing, her passion for community music has led to work with charities Live Music Now and Concerteenies, bringing music to families and young children, SEN schools, care homes and hospitals.
The meeting point of their individual practices combines musical composition with sculpture, film, photography or wearable art as a way to embed themselves in the environment. This shared practice is driven by a need to feel connected and resist the division and fragmentation instilled by fear and power, such as between body and mind, landscape and resources, and of cycles within communities and natural ecosystems. They seek to reignite an awareness of being interconnected with all aspects of ourselves, each other, and the environment around us and unearth a sense of belonging to a wider community. Wild spaces are places in which they can be most inspired by this sense of unity, whether it’s ancient woodland, expansive views, waterways and shores, human made sacred spaces or our own bodies. Their work is a response, communication and preservation of the shared experience of two women within these wild spaces.
Exploring Dinorwig Slate Quarry an eery drone was eminating from the inside the carved caverns – possibly from the Electric Mountain, or Mynydd Gwefru, a pumped-storage hydroelectric scheme. We recorded the drone and the drips inside a carved cavern we went through to see a stunning waterfall in the blown apart mountain, later improvising this vocal score responding to the field recordings and our feelings of being there.
AND… BREATHE is a new sound and light installation from Pif-Paf exploring breath, breathing alone and breathing together. A tactile piece that encourages interaction and mindfulness.