Thunderclap Murphy plays live, wordless music for libraries. A table of instruments sits on the floor, and flute, glockenspiel, guitar and synth are looped into a slow soundtrack that runs under the reading. The level stays around a soft conversation and reaches the whole floor at once.
Wexford Town Library programmed an afternoon of it on Thursday 30 July 2026, and nobody wanted to leave first. You can hear a full performance before you go any further.
The Ambient Book Club
The Ambient Book Club is a two-hour silent reading event with a live soundtrack. Readers bring a book or take one from the shelves, settle in, and read together while the music builds and fades around them.
Branches run it as an afternoon or as an evening, with the length set with you.
You get a reply within the week with a plan and a fee.
How ambient music works in a library
The books are on the shelves, the light is good, and everybody there came in to read. The music settles in around them, reaching the whole floor at the same low level.
The music also does something silence cannot. It covers the small noises people are afraid of making, so a cough, a chair, or a trip to the kettle stops mattering.
The set is wordless from the first minute to the last. Lyrics and reading compete for the same processing, which a 2024 review in Frontiers in Psychology sets out.
Relaxing, enjoyable, interesting mix. I was pleased that we couldn’t use our phones — are constantly distracted by it!
Tina, Wexford
Reading nights in other libraries
- Seattle’s Central Library ran a free Saturday series of live ambient music through 2025, played while people read and moved through the building.
- Harvard’s Countway Library runs silent reading nights with a live pianist, a quiet floor and free hot drinks.
- The National Library of Latvia took its silent reading up into the roof space above Riga and staged the whole evening as an event.
- Brooklyn Public Library’s Off the Record puts a live band and a reading hour on the same bill.
Readers at Wexford Town Library
Wexford Town Library ran it on Thursday 30 July 2026. Notes left on the way out:
Perfectly — in the way that I like to read in silence but the music made me more immersed in my book, like in a bubble, like I was nowhere else, and fully present.
Sara, Wexford
This is a wonderful event idea! No commitment to a book club, easy to drop in.
Katie, Castlebridge
Great, would really recommend. A sense of community.
Ciarán, Wexford
The afternoon is written up in full on the Wexford event report.
Booking a date at your branch
Send a date and the space you have in mind and make a booking enquiry. You get a reply within the week with a plan and a fee.