Posted by Adrian Curtin
16 July 2023
I am pleased to announce that I have a contract with Manchester University Press to produce a monograph entitled The Theatrical Orchestra: British Music Ensembles Experiment with Performance.
Here is a short description:
Orchestras are experimenting with the standard concert format inherited from the nineteenth century and re-thinking how concerts are presented, how musicians perform, what they can perform, where performance can occur, and the role of the audience in the co-creation of the live event. Orchestras exploring these possibilities often collaborate with artists from other disciplines, including theatre, dance, film, and visual art in the creation of generically hybrid work that challenges conventional understanding of the orchestra. This book focuses on the contribution of contemporary British music ensembles and artists to these practices, exploring their work in a comparative manner from a theatre and performance studies perspective. It shows how novel approaches to presenting orchestral music can realise music’s full potential as a multi-modal performance art, facilitate unique and powerful experiences for performers and audiences, enable new interpretations of older repertoire, and readily connect music-making to contemporary social issues and perceptual dynamics.
The book will hopefully be published in 2025.