Rambert Orchestra
by Rambert Dance Company's Music Director, Paul Hoskins
In common with many great British institutions, Rambert Dance Company is important because of its history and its future, its roots and its emerging branches; and the Company is constantly aware of this evolution. Today at Rambert we continue in the strong vein of new and adventurous music begun by the Company's founder, Marie Rambert, and her contemporaries Frederick Ashton and Antony Tudor. All three commissioned music, and used existing music (such as the Mahler song cycle used for Tudor's 1937 work Dark Elegies) long before it was well-known in the concert hall.
Music continues to be at the heart of Rambert's artistic policy today, and The Comedy of Change is the latest in a very varied series of newly-commissioned scores, one of which is performed at every single Rambert performance. Last year we took the significant step of launching two new ventures: Rambert Orchestra, and the Rambert Music Fellowship.
The orchestra has evolved from the associate orchestra London Musici, and is now very much all our own; the orchestra's first season at Sadler's Wells in November 2009 attracted considerable attention and glowing reviews. The post of Music Fellow drew applications from more than 100 composers and conductors, and we are delighted to welcome to Rambert the successful candidate, composer Gavin Higgins. He will spend 2010 with us, learning about dance, working with the Company, and beginning to compose for dance.
Last June, Rambert presented some of the dancers' own work at London's The Place and at Queen Elizabeth Hall, where no fewer than six composers were commissioned to write pieces, many of them in close contact with the players. We are committed to developing Marie Rambert's vision of the Company as a starting point for young choreographers and in which composers play a vital role.