New album by Ivan Hussey – Music for Elastic Theatre

Music-for-Elastic-Theatre-Cover

In December, Ivan released his new album ‘Music for Elastic Theatre’. A collection of compositions written for theatre.

In 2011, composer and cellist, Ivan Hussey was commissioned to compose music for a new production written by Jacek Ludvig Scarso for performance by his theatre company, Elastic Theatre.
The ensuing work, Baroque Box, featuring a cast comprising singers, actors and dancers and composed for a small ensemble of clarinet, violin, cello and percussion, took place at the Greenwich & Docklands International Festival in June 2011 with twenty-one performances over nine days.
The dance-theatre/opera performance, exploring seventeenth century ideas about the human body, was a huge success culminating in Elastic Theatre receiving the Fringe Report Award for best theatre company.
With a change of direction, Scarso began work on the next Elastic Theatre production, once again commissioning Hussey for the score.
Julius, a multi-screen film, made in collaboration with Savage Mills, is a coming of age story of intrusive thoughts and compulsive rituals that follows the trials of Julius, an adolescent in rural Italy, who begins to experience intrusive thoughts about himself as a Roman Emperor.
“The melodies were developed through the use of motivs, both for the characterisation of Julius Caesar and that of the tapping ritual. These motivs return throughout the action with ever more intensity as the obsessive rituals become stronger” Says Hussey.
Julius premiered at the Spitalfields Festival in June 2013 and continues to be shown both Nationally and Internationally.