The Times / November 2011
Hilary Finch
In a city suffocating with musical activity, Nicholas Collon’s Aurora Orchestra lets in more fresh air than most. The aim is to make an audience hear anew, not by sugaring any pills, not by didactic explanation, not by light-shows, but by context… I was gripped from start to finish. And the music, ranging from Ives’s morose Adeste fideles to the Bach/Webern Ricercar a 6, and from Nancarrow’s seventh Study for Player Piano (on the real thing), to the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, was performed to exquisite perfection.
*****
The Guardian / November 2011
Andrew Clements
Startlingly good performances from Collon and the orchestra, fizzing with energy and enthusiasm – especially Webern’s rainbow-hued reworking of the Ricercare from Bach’s Musical Offering, Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice in a reduced orchestration, and Yvar Mikhashoff’s arrangement of Nancarrow’s seventh Player Piano Study.
The Telegraph / October 2011
Hugo Shirley
There was sharp definition… from the orchestra under Nicholas Collon, especially in the sparkling sound worlds of Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice (as cleverly arranged by Iain Farrington) and Elena Kats-Chernin’s nervous, edgy Cadences, Deviations and Scarlatti. Webern’s coolly unpicked Bach Ricercar was beautifully shaped, and Varèse’s Octandre performed with primal dynamism.
BBC Music Magazine / October 2011
Howard Goldstein
[On Seeing is Believing] It is hard to imagine performances more assured and expressive than these by Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra. One of the most ear-catching discs to come my way in a long time.
*****
Arts Desk / August 2011
Graham Rickson
[On Seeing is Believing] Vibrant, positive music, from a preternaturally gifted and likeable young composer. Beautifully performed too.
The Times / August 2011
Hilary Finch
It all made you feel as though you wished Collon and his Aurora Orchestra would simply take over for all the Proms. This was a truly life (and death) enhancing concert.
****
The Telegraph / August 2011
Benedict Brogan
The clever touch was to bracket each sketch and song with a smartly chosen selection of classical greatest hits, which the Aurora Orchestra under Nicholas Collon ripped out with élan, from a thumping Also sprach Zarathustra to the overture of The Marriage of Figaro. Children who came to see their television heroes were cunningly exposed to music that might in future sound familiar, not frightening. My assistant Nancy, seven, sang all the way home.
****
Bachtrack / August 2011
Kay Kempin
Aurora Orchestra was fierce and lively throughout. Presenting more than a striking musical contrast, the musical programme fit nicely alongside the quirky Horrible Histories tunes and helped to place classical music’s greatest hits on a historical timeline… With kids dancing in the stalls—and their parents singing along—Saturday afternoon proved to be a horribly brilliant BBC Proms.
Classical Source / August 2011
Nick Breckenfield
I went with an open mind and was completely bowled over. A ridiculously enjoyable but also impeccably presented romp through world and musical history.
Bachtrack / July 2011
Katy S. Austin
With their appetite for musical diversity and youthful enthusiasm, the six-year-old Aurora Orchestra and their principal conductor, Nicholas Collon, have grand ambitions. With ‘When Doves Cry’ they did not disappoint, showing both their exceptional aptitude for showcasing contemporary music and a promising ability to inject freshness into seminal classical works.
Gramophone / June 2011
Richard Whitehouse
John Rutter’s production, together with the informative notes and stylish packaging, enhance a disc which can hardly be faulted for first impressions.
The Independent / June 2011
Anna Picard
Seeing is Believing, the title track of the AO’s all-Muhly disc, opens like a 21st-century “Lark Ascending”, with violinist Thomas Gould soaring in ecstatic innocence.
The Toronto Star / June 2011
[On Seeing is Believing] The mix, and the musical message, are brilliant. Young Brits, conductor Thomas Collon and Gould’s Aurora Orchestra, are positively electric in their assurance and clarity from beginning to end.
National Public Radio.org / June 2011
Olivia Giovetti
[On Seeing is Believing] A repeated arabesque on a violin curves and twirls as several additional layers of strings and percussion are added to the spiral, at once complementing and contrasting the title work’s first four notes, culminating with the addition of winds. It’s not unlike the ever-expanding universe, the mapping of which inspired this concerto for solo electric six-string violin. For nearly 30 minutes, Muhly commands rapt attention, referencing influences from former mentor Philip Glass to Stravinsky, circa Rite of Spring, and Ravel at his most impressionistic… Thomas Gould and Aurora Orchestra, in tandem with the composer, are in complete control of this transformative work.
BBC Music Online / June 2011
Charlotte Gardner
Minimalism, electronic fusion, and early English choral music don’t generally sit together comfortably within the same sentence, still less on the same classical disc. That fact alone makes Seeing Is Believing worth a listen, aside from these superb performances… Muhly’s orchestral arrangements provide mesmerising complements to his original compositions, which are edgy, sometimes delicate, vital works, heavy with the influence of the great American minimalists but also drawing from modern electronic idioms. The title-track, a concerto for electric violin, is a case in point, played with brilliance by Thomas Gould. Equally brilliant are Aurora’s performances. In the motet arrangements, their playing style is a delicious amalgam of early and contemporary playing styles, whilst the original works are presented with energy, dynamism and a sheer joy in the music. If Muhly is a new name to you, then this beautifully performed disc is the one to get hold of. His music is clever, young, complex and multi-faceted. It’s also capable of beguiling listeners of all ages, classical ‘experts’ and newcomers alike. You can’t ask for more than that.
The Independent / June 2011
Andy Gill
[On Seeing is Believing] Brittle percussion and isolated woodwind “insect music” alternates with passages of pulsing minimalist figures akin to Reich and Adams, with other phrases bringing to mind the entire history of 20th-century American composition, from Ives and Copland through to Bernstein.
The Times / June 2011
Geoff Brown
Seeing is Believing is a CD collection featuring Britain’s brightest young ensemble, Aurora Orchestra, and their hot conductor Nicholas Collon… Aurora’s Thomas Gould, the soloist in the title concerto for six-string electric guitar, ferrets out some amazing sounds, from a dirty bass buzz to a celestial shimmer… In By All Means, Muhly’s beloved Tudor harmonies meet Steve Reich’s dancing feet and Webern’s instrumental fragmentations. It’s a jungle out there, claustrophobic, even dangerous, and the Aurora musicians love danger… The CD is a wonderful calling card for Collon’s Aurora Orchestra. The CD lasts 73 minutes and 23 seconds, and they dazzle in every one of them.
The Guardian / June 2011
Andrew Clements
Seeing Is Believing is immediately engaging and fresh, with some delicious sounds and striking moments, especially the keening glissandi for the solo violin that open the work. Another composition from 2007, Step Team, propels itself on the dislocated motor rhythms of neoclassical Stravinsky before finally collapsing into a lingering but still Stravinskian coda spun by a solo trombone.
The Telegraph / May 2011
Michael White
But for me, the most pleasing moment of the night was to see the Ensemble award go to Aurora Orchestra, a fabulous young chamber orchestra that in six years of existence has emerged as one of the most dynamic, innovative and open-minded groups of its kind – led by the young conductor, Nicholas Collon, who collected the pickle-fork.
Gramophone online blog / May 2011
James Jolly
Fantastic to see Aurora Orchestra acknowledged last night with an RPS Award and Saturday night’s concert – at London’s coolest classical venue, King’s Place (go there if you haven’t already!) – in which they played music by Nico Muhly, John Adams and others, was one of those events that crossed boundaries and perhaps explained their victory. It attracted a very mixed audience, not your average New Music crowd but something way more diverse… Nicholas Collon’s Aurora is a fabulous band, a small but extremely virtuoso group whose musical sympathies are enormously wide.
The Times / May 2011
Richard Morrison
Matching its virtuosic flair and adventurous programming, Nicholas Collon’s London-based Aurora clearly has canny promotional skills too. Not only was this pulsating concert streamed live on the web, it also launched a Decca recording of its central attraction: Seeing is Believing, by the young American composer Nico Muhly. Seeing may well be believing, but marketing brings you believers — and Aurora is fast acquiring plenty of those… John Adams, the old American master, was acknowledged with a stonking performance of his Chamber Symphony: precise yet somehow free-spirited and jazzy under Collon’s direction — exactly as it should be… And I loved hearing the helter-skelter finale of Hindemith’s Kammermusik No 1. Demonic and crazed, it sounded as if Kurt Weill had joined forces with Shostakovich in a nightmare devised by Kafka.
The Guardian / May 2011
Erica Jeal
Seeing Is Believing is a concerto for electric violin, the centrepiece of a felicitous partnership between Nico Muhly and London’s Aurora Orchestra. Aurora’s programming is as eclectic as Muhly’s list of influences; this concert under Nicholas Collon spanned four centuries, finishing with a scamper through the cartoonish Chamber Symphony by John Adams, Muhly’s most obvious musical begetter.
The Telegraph / May 2011
Ivan Hewitt
Launching a new orchestra is a tough business in these difficult times, but Aurora Orchestra are surely set to prosper. Every concert they play is eye-catchingly original and shrewdly balanced. And they are that rare thing, a British orchestra that actually looks good on stage, with not a handbag in sight… and that play with astonishing heat and fervour.
The Guardian / May 2011
Charlotte Higgins
Excellent news that Aurora Orchestra triumphed at the Royal Philharmonic awards last night to carry off the ensemble award – usually won by one of our major, established symphony orchestras. When Aurora was set up just six years ago as a fresh new chamber orchestra, no one thought it would prosper: it’s a crowded field – and anyway, isn’t the audience for classical music supposed to be dying? Aurora has proved the doubters wrong, and the reasons for its success were clear at the sell-out concert it gave on Saturday at Kings Pace in London, programmed by Nico Muhly, whose new opera Two Boys premieres on 24 June at English National Opera. Utterly committed playing was at the heart of the friendly, informal evening (in which Muhly made an appearance to talk about his concerto for electric violin, dedicated to leader Thomas Gould). It’s inspiring to see how creative its players are: the staggeringly virtuosic Gould also works in jazz, its principal viola player Max Baillie has played with tabla player Zakir Hussain and Tinie Tempah, while principal cellist Oliver Coates is working on an installation for the Royal Festival Hall’s boiler room.
Music Criticism Online / May 2011
Stephen Graham
The musicians [of Aurora Orchestra] showed great emotional weight in Mahler’s Piano Quartet Movement in A minor, producing gleaming ensemble in the first subject group darkening tone colours throughout the movement, real tension in the latter stages of the development, and a series of remarkable cadenzas, particularly from a charged Oliver Coates on cello, which elevated the performance to great heights of intensity.
The Arts Desk / May 2011
David Nice
The programming of Aurora Orchestra’s latest adventure showed us why the Arts Council were right to fund this young and dynamic constellation. OK, so I’d have been happiest with a whole evening of Hindemith Kammermusik rather than one movement. But for the new generation of pick-and-mix onliners, the seven eclectic works on the bill couldn’t have been more enticing, thanks to the iron fist of velvet-glove live stream presenter-conductor Nicholas Collon… In John Adams’ Chamber Symphony, Collon’s demeanour said it all: bendy body language combined with a razor-sharp stick technique. From trombone and double bass to piccolo, the players seemed to understand every in-your-face phrase, and the camerawork did them justice (shame about the bubbly sound in my experience of the live stream – laptop with speakers). I only hope Adams, who says he’s heard so many bad performances of his labyrinthine masterwork, gets to see and hear it.
The Guardian / May 2011
Fiona Maddocks
Seeing is Believing, which features Aurora Orchestra and is graced by the exquisite solo playing of Thomas Gould on electric six-string violin, gives a taste of Muhly in what might be called his “English music mode”, with his own delicate arrangements of Byrd and Gibbons alongside beguiling original compositions.
Paul Guest / May 2011
Paul Guest
Aurora Orchestra perform with unique youthful energy and presence. Perfection and clarity is what you expect and you get three times more from Aurora conducted by its artistic director and principal conductor Nicholas Collon… Aurora brings Muhly’s genius alive.
Bachtrack / March 2011
Kay Kempin
Love may be a familiar feeling, but the passion Aurora unleashed at LSO St Luke’s was enough to leave audiences wild with desire. Exploring the darkest undertones of love—anguish, jealousy, remorse and regret—Friday night’s programme, Jealous Guy, was woven together by tango music interspersed with tragic love stories from across musical history. From Purcell to Bernstein, Mahler to Lennon, Aurora proved that love touches us all… Part of the New Moves residency at LSO St. Luke’s, Aurora pushed every type of musical boundary in Jealous Guy. Combining music with dance, Baroque with jazz-inspired tango and chamber music with poppy rock songs, Collon and his players pulled out all the stops to tackle that devil we call love.
The Guardian / March 2011
Tim Ashley
With London residencies at Kings Place and LSO St Luke’s, Aurora Orchestra, founded six years ago, is riding high, and after their latest concert it is easy to understand why. The players are young and dexterous; enthusiasm and exactitude go hand in hand. Founding conductor Nicholas Collon, similarly, has the rare knack of combining self-deprecating charm with great intelligence. They seem comfortable in Kings Place, too, where the acoustic can be merciless, but where music also acquires an in-your-face immediacy… Rosemary Joshua was pitch-perfect and gloriously incisive… The symphonies were also very classy. No 27, with its teasing false endings and suave elegance, was full of sly exuberance, while No 31, “Paris”, gleamed with hauteur and contrapuntal brilliance.
Bachtrack / March 2011
Sebastian Scotney
Aurora Orchestra don’t just survive at breakneck tempi, they absolutely thrive on them. They achieve a weightless, perfectly balanced, unanimous sound, full of astonishing energy. If lovers of classical music haven’t yet heard and seen Aurora make the rosin fly, bring real edge-of-the-seat vitality to a work like this by the seventeen year old Mozart, then I can’t figure what’s holding you back.
Bachtrack / January 2011
Kay Kempin
Part of the King’s Place Mozart Unwrapped series, Aurora delivered a spellbinding performance Thursday night… Leading the orchestra as well as the audience, Collon broke down the traditional barriers between conductor and audience, engaging them in the performance and bringing to light all the facets of Mozart’s genius. Watching Collon, it was easy to see the juxtaposition in Mozart’s music between the quirky and the sublime. With his innovative conducting style, Collon was able to present Mozart both as an exemplary classical composer and as an experimental and energetic young man… Aurora dazzled the audience with the Linz Symphony, No. 36 in C, K425, performing with a controlled frenetic energy and a high level of virtuosity. Exemplified within the Turkish section of the piece, the orchestra and conductor achieved an extraordinary feat: the audience could see Mozart’s musical phrasing in their performance. Playing and moving together, Aurora performed with an energy and physicality unique to the concert stage.
The Times / January 2011
Richard Morrison
The sound of the orchestra had a properly ceremonial swagger, yet this was no old-fashioned, heavyweight stomp through Mozart. Rhythms were clean cut, woodwind solos elegantly shaped and textures beautifully pellucid… I feel about Aurora what audiences in the early 1960s must have sensed about the Academy of St Martin in the Fields: that this is an ensemble talented and ambitious enough to wrench the initiative from more established chamber orchestras. It’s a generational turnover, and very healthy for musical life.
****
The Guardian / January 2011
Erica Jeal
Under Collon, the playing was vividly exuberant, yet still thoughtful and stylish. The average age of the orchestra can’t be a day over 30, and the musicians play as if they have something to prove. The opening bars of the overture to La Clemenza di Tito bristled with intent. The Linz Symphony, No 36, opened very differently, with the strings holding back the vibrato and with Collon’s fluid beat fostering a sense of mystery; but the finale, thick with horn and trumpet, was jubilant.
****
The Arts Desk / January 2011
David Nice
[On Mozart; Symphony No. 36] I haven’t enjoyed a live performance of a classical symphony so much since Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Haydn with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. And Aurora has the benefit of a venue infinitely brighter and warmer in which to charm.
The Times / January 2011
Richard Morrison
To launch a new orchestra, Aurora, in the cut-throat musical marketplace that is London requires courage and conviction. To sustain it through five seasons, during which you programme everything from the Baroque sounds of Gabrieli and Lully to the avant-garde scores of Berio and Adams, shows brilliance as well as bravado.
That’s the achievement of the young conductor Nicholas Collon, but it’s not the only one. When there’s a tricky new opera to be nursed into life, when a top orchestra has a difficult premiere that terrifies more senior conductors, when a promoter wants a bright young enthusiast to lead an extraordinary happening — such as the recent Frank Zappa festival at the Roundhouse — Collon is their first port of call.
The Observer / December 2010
Fiona Maddocks
[On the classical music highlights of 2010:] Groups such as BCMG, Aurora, London Sinfonietta and Britten Sinfonia continued with bold programming.
The Observer / October 2010
Fiona Maddocks
[On Alexander Goehr's Promised End with English Touring Opera] English Touring Opera mounted a skilful, well-cast staging by James Conway, expertly played by the Aurora Orchestra under the baton of Ryan Wigglesworth and with Roderick Earle in the title role.
The Times / August 2010
Geoff Brown
The concert’s highlight was the panache of Nicholas Collon’s Aurora Orchestra. Augmented by the National Children’s Chamber and Youth Chamber orchestras, they sparkled in everything they touched, from Gabrieli’s euphonious polyphony to hell-for-leather Shostakovich.
The Guardian / August 2010
Bibi van der Zee
With the aid of comperes Louise Fryer of Radio 3 and the puppet Basil Brush, conductor Nicholas Collon led us in a couple of singalongs to show us what a fugue is and how a percussion section operates. Against a murmuring background of chattering, interested small voices, the orchestra also played wonderful snatches of music by Giovanni Gabrieli, Jean-Baptiste Lully and John Adams, composers the audience were probably unfamiliar with, but gave them a taste of different eras… The concert was rounded off with Bernstein’s Candide overture, by which time my son was ready to leave. I asked him afterwards what he thought. Ten out of 10, he said. ʻI loved it. I liked it all.ʼ
****
Bachtrack / July 2010
Sebastian Scotney
This kind of innovation, this informed risk-taking is what Aurora does… Aurora play with passion and huge flair, and are set to make a lot of new friends and admirers at their BBC Proms debut in a children’s concert on the morning of Monday August 30th.
The Times / July 2010
Richard Morrison
In 2005 two conductors fresh out of Cambridge set up the Aurora Orchestra. One of them, Robin Ticciati, went on to bigger things, but Collon stuck with Aurora and devised the most stimulating orchestral concerts, with a repertoire ranging from Gabrieli and Lully, through Berio and Adams, to new scores with the dots still wet on the page. This summer he’s prominent not just at the Proms, conducting the Bank Holiday monday children’s concert, but also at the Royal Opera House, where he conducts The Lion’s Face, a touching opera about dementia. That’s typical of his eclecticism and appetite for a challenge… [Collon is] clear-headed, fresh-thinking and a born leader.
Birmingham Post / April 2010
[On the RPS Music Award shortlist] The London Sinfonietta, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and BBC Symphony Orchestra… are all nominated for the RPS Music Award for Ensemble, alongside Aurora Orchestra, one of a new breed of young ensembles cutting an elegant swathe through London’s orchestral scene.
The Sunday Times / March 2010
Paul Driver
High points that will make you mad with joy…. Aurora’s classically restrained [performance of Berio's Laborintus II], meticulously played under Nicholas Collon and benefiting from Frederic Wake-Walker’s thoughtful direction, fabulous laser lighting by Daniel Large and a narrator (Peter Eyre) who mostly used English… A gripping and poignant reminder of the lacerating seriousness of composers of the not so distant past.
The Times / March 2010
Geoff Brown
There cannot be many concerts that open with a Gabrieli canzona and close with the Duke Ellington band’s signature number, Take the A-Train. But diversity is the hallmark of Aurora Orchestra, formed five years ago by two Cambridge University friends, Robin Ticciati and Nicholas Collon. Ticciati’s star has since risen elsewhere, but Collon remains, vigorously conducting fiery and pungent performances… To make dramatic sense of [Berio's Laborintus II] Aurora joined forces with the adventurous Mahogany Opera and its director Frederic Wake-Walker. Eleven singers in clinical white writhed and jittered: cliché actions, but transformed into magic by the web of light playing over their bodies. The staging’s firm grip ran counter to Berio’s vaunted multiplicity of sounds, but it made the labyrinth navigable and created memorable fusings of music and theatre. When Berio’s score shook and quivered, lights quivered in sync: simple, but very effective. As a tape bombardment played out, lights played over the bodies on the floor… Mahogany’s singers, Aurora’s instrumentalists and the actor Peter Eyre (for the text’s spoken fragments) all delivered 100 per cent.
Compositiontoday.com / March 2010
David Bruce
Aurora Orchestra seems to be going from strength to strength. Now in their fifth year, they recently debuted at Kings Place where they have a new home, and have just announced a major three year residency with LSO St Luke’s which will feature a series of cross-arts collaborations… [starting with] Berio’s Laborintus II and John Adams’s Son of Chamber Symphony. Since I first heard about them a few years ago, I sensed a freshness in their approach and programming; and the quality of their playing was confirmed when I saw their production (together with Mahogany Opera who also feature on Friday) of the wonderful but rarely performed (let alone staged) Renard by Stravinsky. New ensembles come and go, but these guys have an air of permanence to them.
Time Out / January 2010
Jonathan Lennie
Wouldn’t it be amazing if there were no musical borders?’ [asks Nicholas Collon]. ‘Wouldn’t that be the ultimate utpoia?’ Such wistful idealism is to be expected from the co-founder and Principal Conductor of Aurora Orchestra, a 30-strong chamber outfit that has been building a reputation for its interesting collaborations, unusual repertoire and meticulously planned musical events, such as playing Birtwistle and Lully alongside capoeira dancers. At just 26 years old, Collon is already an established maestro, regularly stepping up at the head of a variety of other orchestral outfits… Anyone who has seen Aurora play can see that it is more than just the music; one senses a camaraderie, like a family… Five years ago, Collon named his orchestra after the Aurora Borealis, a title he hoped would conjure ‘light, energy, dynamism and clarity.’ It would appear that he has succeeded.
