The Standard Life Aberdeen Opening Event: Five Telegrams takes place outside the Usher Hall on 3 August 2018, 10.30pm
The Standard Life Aberdeen Opening Event: Five Telegrams is a free, outdoor performance comprising large-scale illuminations and projections on the Usher Hall and a new work for orchestra and chorus which opens the International Festival.
Tonight there was a rehearsal for press to take some photos and get an idea of what it will be like on Friday – albeit without music. And it is spectacular. We only saw a few of the movements, but they are full of colour and use the architecture of the Usher Hall as a backdrop. The Harmonium Project also featured on the Usher Hall three years ago, but tonight the visuals were quite different.
Lothian Road will be closed to traffic on Friday night while the event takes place.
The Standard Life Aberdeen Opening Event: Five Telegrams marks both 100 years since the end of the First World War and celebrates Scotland’s Year of Young People, and will be co-designed by young people, providing a poignant reflection on the thousands of young lives lost in the First World War.
This is the artistic vision of event creators Anna Meredith, one of the country’s most exciting contemporary composers, and Tony Award winning artists 59 Productions.
Standard Life Aberdeen Opening Event: Five Telegrams will be ticketed but free to attend. Five Telegrams also marks an historic partnership with The BBC Proms that will mean the two great festivals work closely together. The project will open both the International Festival outside the Usher Hall on 3 August and it already opened the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on 13 July. The joint production marks the first time the International Festival and the Proms have worked together in this way. Events at both locations are rooted in the same creative content but have distinguishing elements.
Five Telegrams is co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW, BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival
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