The Icelandic singer announces a new multimedia project and three-week residency while Albarn debuts a new work about an Elizabethan scientist
The great Icelandic singer-songwriter Bj�rk will be at the forefront of the most ambitious and eclectic programme yet for the Manchester international festival, which has its third edition this summer. She will be in residence for the three weeks of the festival, premiering her new live show, Biophilia, in six intimate events in the city.
With the artist's customary inventiveness, the show will involve specially created instruments, such as a 30ft pendulum, a hybrid between the celeste and the Indonesian gamelan and a digital pipe organ. The album of the same name will be released as a series of multimedia apps, each song made available with other elements such as video and games.
Another musical event that is bound to be eagerly anticipated is Snoop Dogg's live re-creation, for the first time in the UK, of his first album, Doggystyle ? "one of the great hip-hop albums of all time", according to festival director Alex Poots.
And film-makers the Quay brothers, working with violinist Alina Ibragimova (who played Bach at the last festival in Zaha Hadid's concert pavilion), will create an installation in Chetham's school of music for a solo violin programme, including the Bach Chaconne and Berio's Sequenza VII. The event will be a promenade performance moving through the rooms of the school.
In a festival that asks artists ? in the words of poet Lavinia Greenlaw, who is creating a work at Piccadilly station for the event ? "to go to the edge of their practice", musician Damon Albarn will be working with theatre director Rufus Norris to create a work called Doctor Dee, about the famous Elizabethan scientist, alchemist and astrologer. Though the work will use some period instruments, "it will not be pastiche Elizabethan", said Norris. "It will be Damon, and there will be great tunes. It will be accessible, too. It's not going to be 'squeaky-bonk'."
Victoria Wood's play, already announced, based around the famous 1929 Manchester children's choir recording of Nymphs and Shepherds, will be joined by another drama by a comic: this time by Johnny Vegas, in a project as yet untitled.
And, following the success of Punchdrunk's immersive theatre experience for the 2009 festival, It Felt Like a Kiss, the company will create a show, The Crash of the Elysium, specially conceived for children aged six to 12, from which it was possible, said Poots, that adults will be entirely excluded. "I promise it won't disappoint," he said. "The subject is one that 99% of children adore."
On the visual arts side, the festival will mount a show of new performance works at Manchester Art Gallery by figures such as the senior American artist John Baldessari and the German-British artist Tino Sehgal, who has been give the Tate Modern Turbine Hall commission for 2012.
Poots paid tribute to the generosity of Manchester city council, which is continuing to support the festival at a time when many local authorities are severely reducing support to culture. "For the council to remain rock solid is a huge credit to them," he said.
The Guardian is media sponsor of the festival, which runs from 30 June to 17 July.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/mar/17/manchester-international-festival
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