BBC Philharmonic Orchestra - Opera House & Winter Gardens

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra return to Blackpool for the first time in 8 years with an ambitious programme in Blackpool’s historic Opera House.

Programme Overview – Playing with pleasure’s dark edges;

In Oliver Leith’s music, pleasure and pain overlap, so both feelings are palpable in every gesture. Pearly, goldy, woody, bloody, or Abundance for orchestra begins with the best of intentions: “classical, thick, like marble moulding, beautiful, regal.” But formalities quickly get out of hand; everything at Leith’s party droops, fuzzes and deflates.

The psychedelic, blissful minimalism of Terry Riley’s In C flirts with darkness before being dragged back into the light. As a lover of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, a believer in the power of collective music-making, and a seeker of transcendence, In C distilled Riley’s thinking into something pure and strong, and became minimal music’s first mainstream hit.