Bela’s solo music
Bela is a sonic artist with lived experience of neurodivergence. Since 2003, she’s been making improvised and responsive music on acoustic cello, electric cello with effects pedals, voice and environmental sounds. This work has taken her on tours of North America, Europe and the UK, to festivals including Glastonbury; she’s also been commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and had four solo releases.
In 2023 Bela was selected for a prestigious 12-month Arts Council England-funded development period Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) award.
The main focus of this was creative sustainability, explored through movement, embodiment, listening, and sound, with Contact Improvisation (CI) and other movement practitioners throughout England – as well as her own artistic processes.
A main point of enquiry for Bela opened up: ‘what does it feel like to write music for me?’, a pertinent question for a musician who has supported so many other people’s creativity through session work, and community work.
She explored this more deeply during the DYCP, as the focus of artist residency Turning My Cello Round (Fabrica, Brighton, June ’24) and public event Shape and Surrender.
“It was truly beautiful to support Bela in the process of exploring her practice and experience the profound shift in her connection to herself and herself as an artist. This bore more fruit in ways that were perhaps unexpected. For the movement of an artist comes from their deep connection to life, the moment, and in Bela’s case the intimacy she brings to her music.”
Bela’s next artist residency is at Brighton Dome’s Anita’s Room in July 2025. For more details of this visit the cello and movement page.
Turning My Cello Around is a short film by West Creative, documenting Bela’s 2024 artist residency at Fabrica.
upcoming live events
videos
Make Piece Together
Brighton,
Make Piece Together is a 40-minute piece made up of two-minute interactions between Bela and audience members, who are invited to interact with her and her cello in various ways. You don’t need to have any particular expertise to join in, just a sense of curiosity.
Voyaging Out
The evolution of a single painting
Opened Ground, from the dvd Threshold, focusing on the contemporary landscape artist Marco Crivello.
Music by Bela Emerson. Produced by Four Square Fine Arts. Filmakers Last Bus.
Meeting Kate (Expo67Mix)
The amazing Bela Emerson & Expo67
Vid by Winging It TV (BelaFanClubDept.)
Tereza Buskova – Clipping the Church
In 2024-5, IKON Birmingham are exhibiting Clippling the Church as part of Friends in Love and War.
Bela has collaborated with artist Tereza Buskova on seven films, two processions, and three performances. Buskova’s work celebrates customs and community. Clipping the Church documents a 2016 work, where Buskova adorned a Birmingham church with ornate baked bread and encircled it with a living garland of people.
Bela Emerson at Brighton Live
Live Performance
Excerpt from concert film of cellist Bela Emerson in Brighton. By processing her electric cello, Bela Emerson produces a whole host of colours and textures. Improvising into a sample and loop system allows her to build up layers of melodies and rhythms that twist and weave through a number of distinct sections that make up each piece.
Bela Emerson Live at the Old Vortex
By Soren Stirling
Bela Emerson Live at the Old Vortex, London.
Bela Emerson – Devine (Same Actor Remix)
Music by Bela Emerson.
Video by wingingitVIDEOdept.
Bela Emerson Coachwerks gig
This event, at arts space Coachwerks (Brighton), was the only UK performance of a fully-improvised collaboration between Bela & live painter Carlos Vera (USA).
The audience were also invited to make their own visual interpretations of the performance, which were simultaneously projected onto the screen behind Bela.
Bela Emerson – live at Hunter’s Moon
Bela Emerson at Hunter’s Moon Festival.
Live performance in St Georges Church, Carrick on Shannon, Co Leitrim, Ireland, Oct 30th 2011.
Lutine with Bela Emerson
Live at the White Flowers album launch
“We were joined by the wonderful Bela Emerson for a live performance of Sallow Tree, at the launch of our debut album ‘White Flowers’. 27th September 2014, St Laurence’s Church, Falmer, East Sussex.”
listen
DREI – an occasional trio comprising Kirsten Elliott (flute, vocals), Susanne Lambert (drums), and Bela Emerson (cello, electronics). Meet the Moon was recorded live in Brighton.
voice blogs
As part of her DYCP process, Bela reflected on her practice and development via voice blogs, which you can listen to here.