LSO borrows instruments from local musicians 10/03/2008
The London Symphony Orchestra ended up in a race against time this Saturday after a strike by French ferry workers left the orchestra without any instruments. Arriving in Dijon to perform Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, members of the LSO were disconcerted to find that their instruments, music and clothes were still sitting in a lorry in a traffic jam in Kent. The tailbacks were caused by striking SeaFrance workers.
With the concert start approaching, and the lorry stuck in gridlocked traffic, the orchestra decided to try and borrow nearly 100 instruments from around Burgundy. Appeals were made to local musicians and schools, as well as to opera companies in Paris and Lyon. By 8pm an orchestra’s worth of instruments had been rounded up. ‘They came in dribs and drabs,’ says LSO double bassist Matthew Gibson in The Times. ‘Some didn’t get instruments until ten minutes before we went on.’
As well as having to gather together instruments ranging from flutes to cowbells, new scores had to be printed for the players, and traditional concert dress abandoned. The viola section ended up improvising during the performance when a page in the newly printed score was found to be missing. After rapturous applause at the end of the concert, the orchestra was relieved to hear that the lorry-load of instruments had arrived in time for its next performance in Paris.
http://www.bbcmusicmagazine.com/newsread.asp?id=40652
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Royal Opera House to put on ‘pop opera’ Damon Albarn’s first opera comes to London
12/03/2008
An opera by pop star Damon Albarn, a former member of Blur, is to be performed at the Royal Opera House this summer. As part of Covent Garden’s summer season to celebrate Chinese culture, Albarn’s Monkey: Journey to the West will be brought to the world-renowned stage. The opera is Albarn’s first.
Premiered last year at the Manchester International Festival with great success, Monkey: Journey to the West replaces traditional opera singers with aerial acrobats, contortionists, martial artists, jugglers and a cartoon animal. Based on a 16th-century Chinese fable telling the story of the monkey king, the production has been designed by Jamie Hewlett, who also masterminded the cartoon designs for Albarn’s virtual rock band Gorillaz. After the work’s premiere, The Times described the work as ‘an improbable combination of The Lion King, Cirque du Soleil and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’.
Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, has denied claims that putting on the ‘pop opera’ is dumbing down. ‘It was a piece of real quality,’ says Hall in The Times. ‘I think it’s doing what the Opera House should do, which is to present international pieces from around the world.’ Albarn studied classical music in his childhood and is a fan of Messiaen and Cage. ‘It’s difficult to stay in both camps once you’ve entered the world of themes and development,’ says Albarn. ‘I’m not sure how I’m going to do it.’
http://www.bbcmusicmagazine.com/newsread.asp?id=40731
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I am sure you're all well aware of the amount of work I have to be doing with all these nonsense posts going up :P . Really, I do do work -- it's just that a lot of it involves cruising the Internet ;)
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