Orchestral Theatre
Orchestral Theatre
Imagined OccasionsWe were commissioned to produce a three part, concert series for London Contemporary Orchestra, in association with The Roundhouse. This project pioneered the use of immersive, site sensitive practise applied to cinema in projects such as ‘Brazil’ for Secret Cinema, and Art in Common Sounds at the Design Museum and applied it to Music.
GlaubstVivier’s final and unfinished piece, ‘Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele’ is an opera about urban loneliness and was performed in the derelict platform of Aldwych tube station. Fittingly, the composer had mused on the protagonist being killed by a stranger on the French metro, and about how lonely such a densely populated place can be. The eery hollowness of the site invite the audience to engage with the feeling of isolation at the heart of this piece.
The audience were guided towards fragments of music which were scattered throughout the site in order to give the form of an unfinished piece a sense deliberateness. This was also a reference to the fleeting encounters we have with other people in public urban spaces. The performance was accompanied by a tube map programme, wherein the performers were the stations, and the pieces of music were the lines which connected them.
Klang
In keeping with this, the audience were first invited first to a sunset performance of Vivier’s Zipangu on Primrose Hill. This was followed by a guided sound-walk (facilitated by Sennheiser headphones), playing a commissioned radio broadcast by Edmund Finnis, who utilised traffic noises in his composition. The final stop was at the Roundhouse, where Klang was performed. Each space was paired with its own sonic landscape, which the audience was invited to move through, as a mirror and representation of how people move through time.
Following the theme of completing the unfinished, the crowning piece of the second instalment of Imagine Occasions was Stockhausen’s unfinished chamber cycle Klang – Die 24 Stunden des Tages (‘Sound – The 24 Hours of the Day’). The music explores how to describe the quality of each hour of the day with music.
This project took a different approach to completing The 24 Hours of The Day, opting to use the music to inspire sight, taste and smell, providing a complete sensory experience. White costumes for the performers were designed by Vivian Westwood, to be viewed through the specific coloured glasses for each hour assigned by Stockhausen. These colours then inspired the accompanying taste menu, curated by Niki Segnit, as well as allocated scents.
CatchThe final instalment of Imagined Occasions took place in the Oval Space, Bethnal Green. The venue, an old industrial site is framed by derelict, unfinished concrete structures, and The Imperial Gas Company’s 1865 gasometers. This concert explores what happens after death by taking a journey through an empty space where music is broken down to its constituent elements and brought back together in a multitude of ways.
Audience members were split into two groups, based on the micro-programme they selected, which was served in a pill casing. One group represented matter, and the other anti-matter, and embarked on their opposite journeys through the programme. The two groups were then reunited through a glass wall at the end of the experience and were led to interact by the dancers who guided the audience movements through the series.
This series provides a case study in how we can interpret, rework and complete existing pieces of art. It is this immersive quality which creates a new engagement, continuing it as an existing, living piece of art.
This series provides a case study in how we can interpret, rework and complete existing pieces of art. It is this immersive quality which creates a new engagement, continuing it as an existing, living piece of art.