The innovative, pioneering, constantly boundary-pushing Aurora Orchestra is about to celebrate its 20th birthday.
And so, they’re throwing a party.
Well actually, they’re throwing a Carnival, joining forces with the award-winning physical theatre company Frantic Assembly to create an epic staging of The Carnival of the Animals that fuses live orchestral music with light, dance and spoken word.
Aurora at Printworks
Aurora puts on classical music concerts for the kinds of people who don’t go to classical music concerts. Their performances are electrifying – if it still meant anything, you might even say immersive – events which mess with traditional form and use dramatic tech and lighting to showcase the music as it’s never been played before. When they performed Inside Beethoven at Printworks, the orchestra was spread throughout the entire concrete shell of the building, allowing the audience to wander at will from string section to woodwind, and get right up next to the performers. Oh, and they’re all playing on hard mode, performing the piece completely from memory.
As one of the Southbank Centre‘s resident orchestras, Aurora will be staging a couple of different shows there for its anniversary year in 2025. Concrete Voids will turn the Queen Elizabeth Hall into one giant, 3D instrument, playing off the resonance of the building itself alongside 80 hidden speakers to create a constantly morphing improvised performance. They’ll also be joining forces with South African cellist Abel Selaocoe to perform one of his own compositions alongside Beethoven’s 7th symphony. And then there’s the Carnival: a total reimagining of Saint-Saëns’ suite which introduces different instruments as different animals. As always, the Aurora musicians will play it by heart, but this time the show will also feature Frantic Assembly dancers infusing the piece with movement, alongside bespoke design, lighting and spoken word.
Tickets start at just £15 a pop, and the whole thing runs at just over an hour, so it’s not a huge commitment, either.
If you have, say, another party to get along to.
NOTE: Carnival takes place at the Southbank Centre on 3rd May 2025. Tickets start at £15 – you can book on the Southbank Centre website.
Carnival | Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
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