Cinemusica at Arts Centre Melbourne Hamer Hall

Despite over 80 years of combined music-making, Cinemusica marks the first exciting collaboration between Synergy Percussion and the ACO, showcasing the thrilling sonic possibilities of strings and percussion and a shared love of film.

Thomas Newman’s hypnotic and witty score for the Academy Award-winning film American Beauty is one of his most acclaimed soundtracks, while the stabbing suspense of Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho: A Suite for Strings is viscerally familiar, indelibly conjuring Alfred Hitchcock’s horror classic. They are bookended by the surging wildness of two Xenakis works, Voile and the primordial rhythms of Psappha.

The icy atmospherics of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta found an unforgettable visual accompaniment when Stanley Kubrick used it to chilling effect in The Shining.

Directed by Richard Tognetti, Cinemusica features a world premiere composed by Synergy’s Artistic Director, Timothy Constable, capping a highlight music event for 2016.