Aurora to perform live from the Royal Albert Hall as part of 2020 BBC Proms
3 July 2020
We’re delighted to announce that Aurora will appear as part of the 2020 BBC Proms’ special series of live performances at the Royal Albert Hall in September.
The concert, led by Principal Conductor Nicholas Collon, will feature a new commission from Richard Ayres exploring Beethoven’s journey into deafness, as well as his own personal hearing loss. Further details of repertoire will be announced nearer to the performance date.
The performance will be our first live orchestral performance since the start of the UK lockdown in March, but follows a busy summer of digital activity which has seen the orchestra reach over a million viewers through Aurora Play. This new series has featured broadcasts of past concert highlights – including several previous BBC Proms performances – as well as newly-created interactive films hosted by Jessie Maryon Davies. Broadcasts have been presented in partnership with several other organisations including Kings Place, Deutsche Grammophon, the Aldeburgh Festival and Classic FM. Forthcoming Aurora Play broadcasts include Strauss’ Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings, recorded at the 2017 BBC Proms (Sunday 5 July, 4pm) and Four Places: two film collaborations inspired by locations in America: Charles Ives’ Three Places In New England; and Gotham, a collaborative work by Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison performed at Camden’s Roundhouse in 2012 (Sunday 12 July, 4pm).
Recent weeks have also seen the launch of Music of the Spheres on Deutsche Grammophon, our debut album for the iconic Yellow Label in which we apply our trailblazing memorised performance strand to a recording project for the first time, resulting in the first-ever studio recording of a classical symphony performed entirely by heart. The album is available to stream now and will be released physically in the coming months.
John Harte, our Chief Executive says: ‘We are thrilled and deeply honoured to be part of this year’s BBC Proms live performance series. Appearing at the Proms is an experience like no other, and whilst of course this year’s concerts will necessarily be very different from those we’ve delivered over the past decade, for our players and management team the return to the Royal Albert Hall this September will be a deeply emotional one.
‘2020 has been a year of unprecedented challenges, and in common with all arts organisations we are anxiously awaiting news from government about the degree to which the UK’s genuinely world-class arts sector is to be supported through the months ahead. At the same time, the period of lockdown has given us time to pause for breath and to catalyse exciting artistic and strategic thinking. We have been so pleased in particular to have been able to use this time to build up our new digital platform Aurora Play, and to have had so many people from across the globe not just watching our performances but interacting with them.
‘We can’t wait to reconnect with audiences through live orchestral performance and to play our part in what promises to be a very special national moment as the Proms comes back to life.’
All Aurora Play broadcasts and interactive content can be viewed on demand here.