MUSIC | BEYOND OPERA

I was fortunate enough to experience opera from a young age, from a candle lit courtyard in Limousin to Paris Opera House to the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro in Lucca. This may sound boastful but my point is that people are often surprised when I tell them this. A working class northerner with a Manc drawl so greet people with ya arrriyate and have a penchant for a cheeky Greggs pasty (who doesn’t?) likes opera, yup sod the stereotypes, live music is great and opera is beautiful live music with a story. It's all just music at the end of the day from Gold Panda at St John to Smegma at Otto, live music is good whatever the genre (or lack of). 

I am pretty excited about catching LaTraviata at The Kings Head in Islington and tempted by Wozzek at The Royal Opera House but what really turned me on recently was seeing that Ben Frost is composing an opera based on Iain Bank’s The Wasp Factory. What’s not to love about that?!

                      

It’s no secret that I adore Iain Bank’s and previously talked about the effect The Wasp Factory had on my life. The really interesting this is that Ben Frost is composing this so it's likely to be a pretty experimental affair since Frost is influenced by minimal, punk and industrial sounds. For those of you who don’t track his work *cough* Ben Frost is an Iceland (country not frozen food shop) based Australian composer who’s worked with the likes of Tim Hecker and Bjork, composed Music For Solaris with Daniel Bjarnason (based on Andrei Tarkovsky’s rad 1972 film adapted from Lem’s equally rad 1961 book) and he’s currently working on an album that features Swans. Yes, FML! 

Anyhow, I could go on about him a bit more but probably should stop at risk of embarrassing myself. Here’s a video of Ben Frost talking about his work on The Wasp Factory. 

Kerry Flint