Orlando Gough was a founder member of the bands The Lost Jockey & Man Jumping. He writes music mostly for the theatre - operas, plays, dance pieces, music-theatre, directs The Shout, an extraordinary choir of diverse soloists (http://www.theshout.org/), and devises and directs large-scale site-specific choral pieces.



Recent work includes The Singing River, for 12 choirs, 18 boats, two cranes and a locomotive (Theater der Welt, Stuttgart), an oratorio The Most Beautiful Man From The Sea (Welsh National Opera), We Turned On The Light (Proms), Swarmfor marauding chorus (Barbican), a music-theatre piece Critical Mass (Almeida Opera Festival), an opera The Finnish Prisoner (Paddock Productions and Finnish National Opera), a music-theatre piece One, Two for six pairs of identical twins (Dartington), Open Port the closing event of Stavanger2008 European Capital of Culture, for 800 singers, brass band, wooden trumpets, and Raketensymphonie, the opening event of Linz09 European Capital of Culture, for voices and fireworks.



He has just written a piece for children On The Rim Of The World commissioned by all the major opera houses in the UK, and a dance piece Just Add Water? with the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh.



He is an associate artist of the Royal Opera House.



He is currently working on an opera with libretto by Caryl Churchill.



April 2014

 

Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes