Is classical collaboration the future of techno? If the success of last Saturday evening is any indication, in decades to come the seemingly odd-couple of pulsing electronic sounds alongside brass, woodwind and string sections will continue to become even closer bed-buddies.
As the audience slowly began rolling into the open-air venue, the two Detroit dons were joined onstage for a pre-show interview led by Shaun Keyt, best known under the moniker of Viridian. Also joined by arranger, composer and conductor Djizan Emin and Sarah Curro, first violin with the MSO, the duo proved elegant, insightful and well-spoken – a testament to their revered status as two of the most intelligent names in dance music.
Standing amongst a myriad of drum machines on the right of stage, Mills led proceedings for the evening, laying down a series of compositions taken from his earlier work Light From The Outside World (which he performed with the MSO back in 2014), as well as some new creations composed especially for the evening, including reworks of his piece Utopia and an euphoric string-laden rendition of his classic The Bells.
It was May, however, who perhaps received the most rapturous response of the evening. Seated within the centre of the orchestra, and flanked by soprano Michelle McCarthy and mezzo-soprano Cassandra Seidemann, he weaved through his vast back-catalogue as Emin began to conjure up a literal storm. As he roared through his seminal cut Strings Of Life it felt as if the roof of the Sidney Myer Music Bowl stage might just fly off into the night sky.
As Mills then returned onstage to join May for an ecstatic world-first collaborative performance the heavens truly opened up, drenching the crowd. But a saturated ending did little to spoil the evening; it’d been a night from the future.
BY TYSON WRAY
Photo by David Harris
Loved: Those strings in The Bells.
Hated: The difficulty of getting a cab home afterwards.
Drank: Very little.
