Universe of Sound wins RPS Music Award for engaging new audiences
Philharmonia Orchestra’s Universe of Sound installation has received a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award in the category ‘Audiences and Engagement’. The project, a virtual interactive performance of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, was recognised for combining music with technology to engage new audiences with classical music.
Visitors experience 360-degree projections of the orchestra’s performance in multi-channel surround sound, whilst participating in the virtual orchestra. Touch screens, giant displays and movement-based interaction allow them to take part as musicians, conductors, arrangers and composers.Universe of Sound gives the audience the opportunity to explore ten separate rooms, representing the orchestra’s sections, with some areas including real and virtual instruments to enable visitors to play along. With the use of projection, visitors are able to appear alongside the musicians on screen. Digital technology also allows people to simulate the experience of conducting the orchestra. They can record their performances and later access the content they create through the Universe of Sound website.
The installation was devised by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Philharmonia Orchestra’s principal conductor and artistic advisor, in partnership with its digital team. It premiered at the Science Museum in London in May 2012, where it ran for four months. The installation has also been presented in Canterbury and will open in Birmingham on 25 May, before touring abroad.
Universe of Sound is the successor to ‘Re-Rite: Be the Orchestra’, a previous PHF-supported Philharmonia production, which recreated a recording of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on London’s South Bank. Re-Rite won a RPS Music Award for audience development in 2009, and has since toured nationally and internationally.
In 2011, the PHF Arts programme awarded Philharmonia Orchestra a grant of £100,000 over 18 months for the development of Universe of Sound.
