22 | November 7, 2013 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News
The critical list: more hot tickets Round-up
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Music
Cambridge Music Festival
ɀ THE lovely KT Tunstall is back in Cambridge this Friday (November 8) – after headlining the Folk Festival this summer – with a gig at the Corn Exchange. The Scottish songstress and guitarist shot to fame with her debut album Eye to the Telescope in 2004 (remember Black Horse and a Cherry Tree?), and is currently touring with her fourth studio album, Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon. She’s pretty awesome. Tickets are £17.50 – £27.50 from (01223) 357851 and the doors open at 7.30pm with support from singersongwriter Billy Lockett. ɀ JAZZ vs. scientific data from NASA. No, really. That’s the premise of Space F!ght Sci Fi tour which pits a jazz trio against NASA, live electronics and 3D visual projections. The troupe of sound artists Radek Rudnicki, James Mainwaring, composer Tom Adams and Jakub Hader on visuals (inspired by the likes Philip K Dick and Stanislaw Lem), the group use: “ground-level ozone data to control and shape the music.” Yes, we’re not quite sure what to expect either. Catch the show at the Leper Chapel, Cambridge on Monday, November 11. Tickets cost £5.50 from soundandmusic.org/spacefight. ɀ FANCY a bit of family friendly opera? Cherry Hinton Community Opera is staging Noye’s Fludde (aka Noah’s Ark) at St Andrew’s Church in Cherry Hinton from November 7 until 9 at 7pm. The cast is made up of local primary and secondary pupils with stunning voices and a knack for theatrics. There will be ships, storms and rainbows galore. Tickets cost £7-£9 on the door. ɀ CATCH Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo at Cambridge Junction on Monday, November 11. The singer-songwriter will have support from Chris T-T, and on the night one audience member will get the chance to stroll up on stage and sing a duet with Emily in place of Frank Turner, on the track Fields Of June. Are you brave enough to do it? Tickets are £12 from (01223) 511511 and the show kicks off at 8pm.
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HIS year’s annual Cambridge Music Festival – which the News is media partners of – will open with a collaborative audio-visual extravaganza at Senate House thanks to American composer and conductor Eric Whitacre. The star of the choral world melded the video and audio of more than 3000 singers warbling lines to his piece, Water Night, to form an awe-inspiring Virtual Choir that is now in its fourth phase and notching up YouTube hits like nobody’s business. Water Night will be projected onto Senate House on Tuesday, November 12 and Wednesday, November 13, to kick Cambridge Music Festival off in style. Ella Walker caught up with the ever-so charming Whitacre (who is the spit of Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones), to talk about the Virtual Choir and what it’s like to be the rock star of choral music.
Where did you get the idea for Virtual Choir? A young girl posted onto YouTube a fan video and she was singing lines to a piece I had written called Sleep. I had the idea right then; I thought if I can get 50 people like her doing what she’s doing alone in that room, but singing their own part, and if we could somehow synchronise them, you would have this choir, a virtual choir. You’ve brought together 3,700 singers from 76 countries to make the final piece Water Night (one of four such collaborations). That’s a lot of videos to trawl through. How did you go about collating all that material? At first it wasn’t so bad because we only had 185 singers from 12 countries. In fact one young man named Scott Haines collated nearly all of it himself. It wasn’t until later iterations, with a thousand singers and bigger proportions, that it became more complicated. What has the response been like so far? Some people just respond to the music and think how beautiful that all these people have come together. But a lot of people I think are responding to the social phenomenon part of it: which is people of every race, creed and colour coming together to do nothing but sing
together, with no other reason than to make something beautiful, to be part of something larger than themselves. When Water Night is shown in Cambridge, it will be the first time it’s shown outside. What impact do you think that will have on how people experience the piece? I’m not sure. I hope that it brings this new dimension to it, especially as it will be projected in the evening. I hope it takes on an even more ethereal and a more transcendent quality than it does just on the YouTube video (which you can watch online at Cambridgenews.co.uk/whats-on). The New York Times called you the “first rock star to emerge from the world of choral music”. What does that feel like and would you say it’s accurate? (Laughing) I’m not sure if it’s accurate but it’s nice! I think deep in my heart I’ve always wanted to be a pop star. I still dream about being the fifth member of Depeche Mode, they just won’t call me. So I’m ok with it. What I especially like, because I came to classical music late, is the casualness of rock and the visceral honesty that rock and pop have; I would love to help bring that into classical music. And how was winning a Grammy (Whitacre won Best Choral Performance in 2012 for his album, Light and Gold)? It was exactly like you’d imagine, you know? They called my name and the next thing I remember I was in the car
going home, I have no memory whatsoever of it (laughing). It was surreal. Would you say that’s been the highlight of your career? My god... Well, it’ll sound cliché but it’s true: every day that I get to make music and not have a real job, that’s the highlight of my career. I still can’t believe people are paying me to do this. How are you enjoying your current residency a Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge? I adore it. I love Cambridge and I really like Dr David Skinner who’s the man who brought me there. I think he’s doing extraordinary work so every time I’m there I feel like my mind and spirit are growing exponentially. Who are you listening to at the moment? Let me look at my iPhone and I’ll tell you. I’m listening to a country and western singer named Sarah Jarosz, I just listened to Radiohead Kid A – this is all just the last couple of hours, and I’m going to the gym now so it’ll be all trance and dubstep for the next hour. And what should we expect from you next? Next I’m writing a piece for the Hamburg Symphony and then we’ve got a new Virtual Choir that is just being finished now and will be released at Disneyland in December. Water Night will be projected after dark but times haven’t been specified so you have to hope you get lucky and wander by at the right moment… For the full line-up and more information about Cambridge Music Festival, visit cammusic.co.uk.