My last visit to Seaham was the day after Mrs Thatcher died, and people were celebrating with “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead”. The East Durham mining town's first coal mine opened in 1845; the last closed in 1992. The economic impact has been brutal but the town is now rebranding itself as a seaside resort with a mining heritage.

This was the unlikely setting for a concert event by New York-based Sō Percussion – the quartet of Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Eric Cha-Beach. Sō's repertoire ranges across Cage, Xenakis and Steve Reich. They've commissioned David Lang and Steve Mackey, and collaborated with Matmos – not a typical Seaham gig, therefore. But under the auspices of community involvement programme East Durham Creates, the ensemble visited towns and villages, meeting local people, learning about the history of the coalfield region, and finding inspiration for their performance From Out A Darker Sea.

The premiere at the Victorian church of St Johns was a sell-out, attended by civic dignitaries led by Councillor Ken Dixon, Mayor of Stockton-on-Tees, wearing his chains of office. Born in Middlesbrough, a long-serving police officer who finished as a police community sergeant, his webpage describes him as a fan of 60s music, so this won't be his familiar musical fare.

The unfamiliarity made the effect on the audience all the more moving – they were clearly gripped. The work had four parts. “Coal and Flower” contrasted the black coal dust and vivid yellow of the rape flower, whose fields surround the former collieries. One member of the quartet crayoned and painted the day's newspaper, their working projected onto videoscreen and sent out into the body of the church on a washing line conveyance. The remaining players, on tom-toms, small gongs and small organ keyboards, developed a groove with gamelan-like sonorities. “Four Portraits” was made in collaboration with students from East Durham College filmed doing everyday activities – texting, eating fish and chips, and playing video games. Music was for percussion and MIDI keyboard, reminiscent of Terry Riley-style organ.

“Harold and Sylvia” adapted dialogue from a conversation at a local community centre, interspersed with comments from the diary of Josh Quillen's father when he was suffering from motor neurone disease. The final part, “Song for Billy”/“For the Durham Sea”, combined music with footage and film by Amber Film and Photography Collective. It memorialises Billy, a young man who died in a mining accident thirty years ago, and included a reading by one of his former work colleagues. The work grew out of Finnish photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinnen's superb series of colour images The Coal Coast, including evocative images of old boots on cracked clay, against a soundtrack of waves and wind, and live percussion.

Afterwards, Adam Sliwinski from the ensemble addressed the effect of that last piece: “Some of Billy's comrades from the pits were at our show, and the emotion on their faces made it evident that the incident still felt like yesterday to them. There really was no need to have any conversation about whether our contemporary practices were accessible, because there was something deeper and more immediate that spoke to their aesthetic experience.”

I asked him how the project came about. “The organization Forma commissioned us. They’d been following our work [and] thought we’d be a good match for a project in the Northeast”. At the start he knew a little about the area: “I’d seen Billy Elliott and was marginally aware of the strikes and the culture of the coal mining communities, but that’s it”. The ensemble have done immersive community projects before, though not at this distance, but Forma funded several return trips to research the project.

When I suggest that this wasn't a typical audience for their music – if there is such a thing – Sliwinski replies: “It’s hard to pin down our typical audience, but you’re right in suggesting that some of the folks in the audience were there more for curiosity in the local angle than for their interest in this kind of music”. He makes the important point that the ensemble believe strongly in what Umberto Eco calls “double–coding”: “the idea that an effective work of art can have multiple access points which speaks to people of different backgrounds and levels of prior experience. A Beethoven symphony can stimulate for its melodies and rhythmic excitement, and that’s great. You could also spend a lifetime studying its formal structures, and that’s also great.”

Sliwinski is still surprised by the level of antipathy to Mrs Thatcher: “I think it’s because her legacy is not just one of policies leading inexorably towards decline, but that she broke the industry so suddenly and decisively.” The industry sustained the community and brought it pride. “Time and time again, when we asked former miners, they said: it was hell down there, but I’d go back in a heartbeat. They miss the camaraderie. We heard many stories about how the community would pull together in times of tragedy or need. They don’t feel the same way about being cab drivers or working call centres”. That conundrum continues to vex governments presiding over industrial decline.

Sō Percussion's To A Darker Sea took place at St John's Church, Seaham, on 18 August.