Otter
Lutra lutra on the Stour

Otter: Lutra lutra on the Stour was a major component of Common Ground’s project, Confluence: new music for the River Stour. Paul Hyland and composer Helen Porter worked with Wimborne Community Theatre, Mark Pritchard and many others to make a new choral work to celebrate the gradual return of otters in numbers to the rivers of Dorset.

The piece was premiered at Wimborne Minster in 2001 and subsequently performed, near the mouth of the Stour, in Christchurch Priory and at Guildford Cathedral.

Some of Paul Hyland’s texts were subsequently used as epigraphs in Otter Country, Miriam Darlington (Granta, 2012).