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NewsOctober, 20 Rick Wakeman Debuts Black Hole Piece at Starmus VIII
Rick Wakeman brought a brand-new work to the stage at Tenerife's Pirámide de Arona during Starmus VIII, giving Echoes from Black Holes its world premiere. The piece blends sweeping classical architecture with a cosmic narrative, and the audience included a good number of scientists, astronomers and music lovers. The idea began with Garik Israelian, co-founder of Starmus, who pictured splitting a landmark lecture on black holes by Professor Stephen Hawking into separate sections, then scoring each one and pairing it with striking visuals. Wakeman drew on Hawking's ideas and wove his own dramatic keyboard writing around recordings of Hawking's voice, using them to hold the movements together. When the closing section ended, the hall rose for a standing ovation. Wakeman left the stage to loud applause, but the crowd stayed put, so the keyboardist came back for an unexpected two-song encore. For that finale he recast two Beatles numbers through the eyes of great classical composers. Help! became a romantic piece in the manner of Camille Saint-Saëns, while Eleanor Rigby was turned into a dark, driving arrangement echoing the theatrical style of Sergei Prokofiev. Given his recent health scares, it made for a remarkable evening. The performance gave a fitting close to a night that combined music and science. The full performance can be watched below. There is also an exclusive interview in which Rick walks through the whole process in detail.
Photo: Music-News |
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