Running throughout the spring and into July, the RNCM continues its ambitious mission to bring a fresh focus to the natural world and the growing climate crisis with The Future is Green, an original initiative which features an eclectic series of public performances designed to ignite collective conversation about our duty to secure a sustainable, harmonious tomorrow.
Here are some programme highlights:
Promising a cinema experience like never before, Nature on Film invites audiences to experience the wonder of early environmental documentaries with a selection of brand new live orchestral accompaniments.
Featuring the films of F Percy Smith and Jean Painlevé, this captivating one-off event recontextualises everything from time-lapse photography reels to original ‘talkies’ life-cycle narrations as part of The Future is Green series.
On Thu 7 Mar, the RNCM flute department presents another climate-inspired Spotlight concert showcasing the soaring versatility of wind music and its ability to conjure the inarticulable majesty of our natural world.
Returning for another year on Thu 14 Mar, the RNCM’s immensely popular Original Voices Festival celebrates new perspectives on music by ‘reimagining how we perform and present works from the past’, unpacking the potential of our musical future with pioneering live performance which dismantles convention and transforms the concert hall itself into a new, forward-facing crucible of innovative sound and structure.
On Thu 14 Mar, RNCM students join Manchester Camerata to transport audiences on an euphoric journey of endless possibilities, combining music, spoken word, music and improvisation to deliver a soul-stirring evening of hope and evolution.
On Fri 15 Mar, the RNCM’s International Chair in Violin Henning Kraggerud unites with the Chamber Orchestra to challenge some of the most enduring narratives in classical music across an invigorating evening of orchestral reinvention, as this formidable pairing reimagines the works of Mendelssohn and Mozart while also championing ‘flexible scoring’ to highlight the environmentally friendly ways in which to enjoy live music.
Presented in collaboration with youth-led global climate non-profit organisation, Force of Nature, alongside members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Northern College of Music, award-winning BBC Radio 3 Presenter Delia Stevens and three-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year nominee Will Pound première a brand new double percussion and harmonica/melodeon concerto – Silent Planet Suite. It offers an enchanting recalibration of Gustav Holst’s inimitable Planets Suite, in celebration of his 150th birthday.
Stevens and Pound’s reimagined work includes a movement for the planet Earth – famously left out of Holst’s version for being ‘astrologically insignificant’ – in a joint collaboration with Force of Nature activists to emphasise the need to listen to the demands of our ailing home.
RNCM, 124 Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9RD
rncm.ac.uk
- Words:
- Wolf McFarlane
- Published on:
- Fri 9 Feb 2024
Taking place for one night only as part of the RNCM’s free Spotlights concert series, in which students compose and perform their own innovative arrangements spanning a wide array of themes, the Hive Sinfonia presents a profoundly intriguing programme which explores the amorphous and often paradoxical concept of growth.
From the simplicity of tree roots to the ideological bedrock of finance, this enthralling concert offers a uniquely fresh meditation on the nature of expansion, conquest, greed, and the peculiar drive at the core of all living organisms.