Waterworks - the Baltic Sea Philharmonic's new concert experience

Kristjan Järvi and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic, at Historical Technical Museum, Peenemünde, for the Usedom Festival

Waterworks, the new concert show from Kristjan Järvi and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic, begins a tour of Germany and Denmark tomorrow (5 May 2017). The programme combines arrangements of Handel's Water Music with Philip Glass's Violin Concerto No. 2 The American Four Seasons (with violinist Mikhail Simonyan) and Glass's Aguas da Amazonia (arranged by Charles Coleman), all three taking the theme of water. The Baltic Sea Philharmonic will collaborate with lighting designer Bertil Mark, sound designer Chris Ekers and projection artist Philipp Geist to provide concert goers with an immersive experience of music, light, images and sound. Kristjan Järvi says: ‘We want to create an atmosphere from the moment a concert goer enters the space. The audience should feel as if they are suddenly entering a new dimension, a world where anything is possible.’.

The performances in Copenhagen and Aarhus will include a series of school concerts as part of Danish Radio’s ‘Into the Music’ project, which brings children from rural Denmark to major concert halls to experience symphonic music, often for the first time. The orchestra has been part of this ground-breaking scheme since 2015, and this year will play the music of Handel and Philip Glass to more than 7,000 pupils and refugees from refugee camps in Denmark.

Friday, 5 May 2017, 7.00 pm, Hattingen (LWL-Industriemuseum Henrichshütte), Germany
Sunday, 7 May 2017, 3.00 pm, Copenhagen (DR Concert Hall), Denmark
Monday, 8 May 2017, 9.00 am, 11.00 am, 1.00 pm, Copenhagen (DR Concert Hall), Denmark (school concerts)
Tuesday, 9 May 2017, 7.00 pm, Århus (Musikhuset), Denmark
Wednesday, 10 May 2017, 9.00 am, 11.00 am, 1.00 pm, Århus (Musikhuset), Denmark (school concerts)

I will be catching the programme later this year, in August, when the orchestra performs it at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. You can read my interview with Kristjan Järvi on this blog.