Manchester Collective's New Season: Diverse and Eclectic Programmes Across 50 Shows in 18 Cities in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands
Robert Hugill, 30 Aug 2019, Planet Hugill
Manchester Collective's 2019/20 season, which kicks off on 19 September 2019 with Sciroccowith South African cellist Abel Selacoe and his band Chesaba, features the ensemble's largest and most ambitious touring to date, performing 50 shows in 18 cities across the UK, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The programmes are diverse and eclectic, aiming to highlight the joy of music making and of inclusivity, and venues are varied with abandoned buildings, nightclubs, concert halls as well as the promise of 'more weird and wonderful spaces than ever'!
New work includes an Opera North commission for Leeds Light Night (11 & 12 October, Leeds) in which the ensemble will be performing Erland Cooper's new work The Birds, with pianist Kerry Young, featuring sound, colour, light and music intertwining alongside Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux and Rautavaara's Swans Migrating.
The Manchester Collective gave the premiere of Edmund Finnis' The Centre is Everywhereat the Southbank Centre this Summer, and they will be touring it across the UK in a programme which sees music director Rakhi Singh perform 'an unholy mashup' of Vivaldi’s Four Seasonsand Ligeti’s Metamorphosen Nocturnes.
There is new show collaborating with Danish pipe and drum virtuoso Poul Høxbro, and the Clod Ensemble's Paul Clark will be premiering a new piece. Cries and Whisperswill be an intimate string quartet programme featuring Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartetand transcriptions of sacred music by Carlo Gesualdo! George Crumb's iconic Vox Balanae will feature in the Voice of the Whale programme which comes to Kings Place next year as part of the Nature Unwrappedseason, expect a performance under blue light by anonymous, masked musicians, on instruments that are amplified and modified. Also in the programme is a new piece from Alex Groves and music by Molly Joyce, Andrew Hamilton and Toru Takemitsu.
The season ends with Bach's G Major Cello Suite alongside George Enescu's String Octet.
The next generation of performing musicians will feature in the ensemble's Future Music scheme, where working with the Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and the Royal Scottish Conservatoire, the Collective will produce residencies, orchestral labs, string quartet mentoring sessions, and a professional development curriculum.