Michel van der Aa: Shades of Red with London Sinfonietta
The UK premiere of Michel van der Aa’s Shades of Red, a musical exploration of coloured alter egos, is presented by the London Sinfonietta at the Southbank Centre on 22 February.
The London Sinfonietta extends its close relationship with the music of Michel van der Aa on 22 February, with the first UK performance of his Shades of Red at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room under the baton of Jack Sheen. This collaboration follows the ensemble’s 2014 performances of the complete Here Trilogy coupled with the world premiere of van der Aa’s clarinet concerto Hysteresis and its first UK staging in 2016 of his Pessoa-inspired theatre work The Book of Disquiet with actor Samuel West.
Shades of Red was co-commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, originally for performance in the pandemic year of 2020, together with KölnMusk for Musikfabrik and the Asko|Schoenberg ensemble. Scored for 12 instrumentalists and soundtrack, the 11-minute score combines two central preoccupations of the composer: the inter-relation of alter egos and the fusing of live performance and electronics. The volatility of material and sudden splintering shifts of colour prefigure van der Aa’s opera Upload, which overlapped with the composition of the ensemble work.
The composer describes how “Shades of Red is a musical conversation about the colour red. Its four parts; Carmine, Magenta, Crimson, and Vermilion each showcase a different tonal shade, and reaction-hierarchy between the instruments. The soundtrack extends and mirrors the sound of the instruments and functions as an alter ego of the acoustic sound, confronting the players with a warped version of their own playing. A special role is carved out for the Rhodes and Hammond keyboards, often creating rhythmical markings and impulses that shape the rest of the ensemble.”
This Spring brings the German premiere of Michel van der Aa’s most recent theatre work, The Book of Water at the Philharmonie in Cologne on 21 March. The cast is headed by actor Samuel West on stage, with his father Timothy West and soprano Mary Bevan on film. Production and film are directed by Michel van der Aa and the live string quartet is provided by Ensemble Modern, as at the work’s world premiere at the Venice Biennale in 2022.
Michel van der Aa is currently working on a virtual reality installation, From Dust, for premiere this autumn, and a new music theatre commission for Dutch National Opera.
> Further information on Work: Shades of Red
Photo: Priska Ketterer
