Jamie XX composes Ballet

In-demand producer Jamie XX is set to compose a contemporary Ballet score for the Manchester International Festival. 

The Manchester Opera House will play host to performance which will see the Mercury Award winner compose the music for Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Tree of Codes.’ The book is famous for its experimental formation, Foer ‘cut’ words and passages from Bruno Schultz’s ‘Street Of Crocodiles’ and created an entirely new story. Experimental producer Jamie XX seems like a good candidate to compose the score; maybe he could follow suit and ‘cut’ his music & inspirations?

jamie xx – sleep sound. from V on Vimeo.

Jonathon Safran Foer’s enigmatic novel Tree Of Codes’ is an immersive sculptural work that brilliantly hovers between words and spaces, surfaces and layers, pasts and futures. Its post apocalyptic narrative and reinvention of the process of reading itself catapults your imagination into bracing liminal states. These blurred and disorientating worlds provide a powerful point of departure for our collaboration on stage – where constellations of light, shadows, bodies, objects and sound dance at the edges of darkness.” – Wayne McGregor

The choreography will be directed by local legend Wayne McGregor and will be performed by members of the Paris Opera Ballet. Supplying the visual environment will be Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, the man who put a giant Sun in the Tate.  

“Clearly Jamie’s music can’t live without movement and space. Clearly Wayne’s choreography can’t live without sound and space. Clearly my art can’t live without sound and movement. Clearly creativity can change the world” Olafur Eliasson

The Manchester International Festival will run from July 2nd – 19th 2015, the full lineup will be revealed in February.

Written by Alex Lewis