12 Ensemble (strings) and GBSR Duo (percussion and piano) are two of the most exciting young groups in the UK classical music scene, constantly looking to reinvent the canon and commission new works from composers pushing the boundaries of the form, recently collaborating on Oliver Leith’s critically-acclaimed Last Days at the Royal Opera House.
Together they will explore music’s obsession with death, in a programme of heavenly and hellish visions by five composers working between classical and non-classical genres.
The programme opens with works by Mica Levi from the film Under the Skin (2014), and mind-bending music by Italian visionary Fausto Romitelli, who died in 2004 aged just 41. Receiving its world premiere, Laurence Osborn’s TOMB! uses the historic tombeau genre (a composition commemorating the death of a notable individual) to take a sideways look at classical music’s death fixation.
Brian Eno and Harold Budd’s glittering, suspended Ambient 2 forms the second half of the programme, a seminal work of the ambient genre that encourages a collective meditative experience, being performed in the centre of the hall enveloped by audience on all sides.
