The Night Sky
Creative Direction / Producer / Programming / Script / Projection Design
As the concert hall is transformed into a planetarium, a star-gazing audience lie within an exploded orchestra.
Combining astronomy-themed music with projections and storytelling, The Night Sky explores humanity’s relationship with the stars.
Music by Haydn, Hovhaness, Gabriel Prokofiev, Ludovico Einaudi, Holst, Jessie Montgomery, Carol J Jones and Duparc is accompanied by bespoke animations and imagery from the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes, projected onto the venue’s ceiling.
Between pieces, former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino tells his experience of spacewalking on Hubble, together with the stories of other pioneering astronomers including Plato, Copernicus, Galileo and Herschel - read by Adjoa Andoh and Henry Goodman.
“The Night Sky is simply glorious . . . The audience remain rapt throughout: there’s none of the usual throat-clearing and programme-turning of a conventional conert. All lie or sit in companionable silence gazing up at the stars. We don’t hear conductor Olivia Clarke arrive and as one piece blends into the next, there is no time - or need - for applause. But when we are brought back to earth, the applause is fervent”
“Incredibly magical concert last night: The Night Sky, featuring live orchestra playing music about the cosmos, audience lying on the floor on cushions, gazing at video projections of outer space on the domed ceiling.”
“The standout moment for me was the marrying up of the projection and the sounds of the orchestra - it enhances both of them.”
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First performance date: 2023
My role: Concept, programming, script, projection design, sound design
Part of Southbank Sinfonia’s #ConcertLab series
Venue: St John’s Smith Square, London
Conductor: Olivia Clarke
Narration: Mike Massimino, Adjoa Andoh, Henry Goodman
Event photography: Sophie Oliver
Event film: Matt Jolly
Supported by the Marchus Trust
