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Five Telegrams

BBC Proms

2018

Five Telegrams - a co-commission for 59 Productions & composer Anna Meredith.

The commission came from a joint venture between the BBC Proms, Edinburgh International Festival and 14-18 Now. In a unique synthesis of music and visual design, a twenty minute animated piece was  projected onto the external and internal façades of the Royal Albert Hall, accompanied by Meredith’s new work for orchestra and chorus, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, under Sakari Oramo.

Opened August 2018

BBC Proms & Edinburgh International Festival

★★★★★
An intricate video projection mapped onto the face of the Usher Hall which mapped every contour of the building, turning it into a towering special effect. Before our eyes, it exploded with bright colours, melted away into darkness and threatened to burst off its axis as the drum-like building spun with racing streams of digital code, smoke jets on the roof lending realism to the sense of frantic kinetic motion.
★★★★★
The fruit of their research into communications during the First World War, from the gung-ho rhetoric of the media, to the censorship of postcards back from the front and then the pace of the message of the declaration of peace were themselves communicated with a clarity that surpassed the spectacles of previous years.
★★★★
A bold and imaginative musical expression of the end of WWI … As for the visuals, they were so beautifully decorative that one sometimes forgot their sinister implication. Nonetheless this was a spectacular and brilliantly conceived start to the season

Credits

Music
Anna Meredith

Performed by
Sakari Oramo
BBC Symphony Orchestra
National Youth Choir of Great Britain
Proms Youth Ensemble

Commissioned by
BBC Proms
Edinburgh International Festival
14-18NOW

59 Team

Director
Richard Slaney

Technical Manager
James Roxburgh

Assistant Designer
Matthew Taylor

Animator
Jarek Radecki

Technical Assistant
Iain Syme

Video Programmer
Sam Jeffs

Lighting Designer
Leo Woolcock

Movement Director
Nathan Clarke

Lead Designer
Nicol Scott

Technical Associate
Maximilien Spielbichler

Animator
Aaron Brady

Animator
Sean Kothe

Video Programmer
Jack Jewel

Video Programmer
Leo Flint

Sound Designer
Gareth Fry

Producer
Rebecca Collis

Producer (Interior Proms)
Ollie Hester

Animator
Emily Howells

Animator
Tom Munday

Video Programmer
David Callanan

Data Wrangler
Raphael Pimlott

Show Caller
Emily Thompson