A double dose of marvelous

Posted on Tuesday, May 8, 2012

I have two huge premieres in a matter of days later this month. First on 23rd May, the London Philharmonic Orchestra will give two world premiere performances of Prince Zal and the Simorgh to a Festival Hall packed with school kids (if you can imagine any more daunting audience). The piece features a narration, written and presented by the wonderful Sally Pomme Clayton and is based on part of the Iranian epic poem The Shahnameh. You could call it a kind of Iranian Peter and the Wolf. But it's quite a dark and dramatic story, so it will be very "interesting" to see how it goes over.

Equally daunting is the second premiere - my '20x12' Cultural Olympiad commission Fire - at the Salisbury Festival on 26th May. This is daunting because of the logistics of handling a fire artist, and a large chorus singing in a circle (even with two conductors we will be struggling to co-ordinate). But with a large dose of positive thinking, and a drier spell of weather than we've been having recently, I'm sure, in the words of the great English conductor David Parry, all will be MARVELOUS!

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