Manchester International Festival Releases Schedule for 2015 Programme

MIF has invited Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon (Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno) and celebrated pianist Hélène Grimaud to create Neck of the Woods, a portrait of the wolf brought to life in a startling collision of visual art, music and theatre.

On the stage of HOME, Manchester's new centre for international contemporary art, theatre, film and books, legendary actor Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter, Broadchurch) will recite and perform the story of the wolf as never before.

Grimaud will curate and perform a series of works? for piano, while Gordon will create the visual world. They have collaborated with Rampling and New York- based novelist and playwright Veronica Gonzalez Peña, weaving together stories, music, motifs, phrases and fragments to build this lyrical and beguiling work.

In a new partnership to support their ongoing creative development, the Sacred Sounds Women's Choir, first formed for MIF13, will perform as part of the soundscape to the production.

Veronica Gonzalez Peña is author of the critically acclaimed novels Twin Time: or, how death befell me, and The Sad Passions, both published by semiotext(e). Her short stories have been widely published and anthologised. Gonzalez Peña is also founder of rockypoint press, a series of artist-writer collaborations, including prints, a reading series, and films. Her pamphlet So Far From God, a study of the Mexican drug war, was written for the semiotext(e) exhibition in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.

British conceptual artist Douglas Gordon has received countless accolades for his work including the Turner Prize, the Premio 2000 (La Biennale di Venezia), the Hugo Boss Prize (Guggenheim Museum), the Roswitha Haftmann Prize (Kunsthaus Zürich), and the Käthe-Kollwitz Prize (Akademie der Künste). Gordon has exhibited internationally, with major exhibitions including 24 Hour Psycho, Timelineat The Museum of Modern Art (New York) which also travelled to MALBA Colección Costantini (Buenos Aires), Pretty much every word written, spoken, heard, overheard from 1989... at the MART (Italy), Superhumanatural at the National Galleries of Scotland, Between Darkness and Light: Works 1989-2007 at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Germany), and Blood, Sweat, Tears at DOX Centre for Contemporary Art (Prague) and Tate Britain. Gordon has also exhibited his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), the Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona), Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, as well as many other galleries worldwide. On screen, his work includes Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, k.364 and Henry Rebel: Drawing and Burning.

Hélène Grimaud is one of the most celebrated pianists of her generation and has toured extensively with many of the world's major orchestras and conductors. An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2002, she has recorded a number of works of great acclaim with the label. These have been awarded numerous accolades, among them the Cannes Classical Recording of the Year, Choc du Monde de la musique, Diapason d'or, Grand Prix du disque, Record Academy Prize (Tokyo), Midem Classic Award and the Echo Award. Grimaud is also an ardent and committed chamber musician who performs frequently at the most prestigious festivals and cultural events with a wide range of musical collaborators. Between her debut in 1995 with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Claudio Abbado and her first performance with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur in 1999, just two of many acclaimed musical milestones, Grimaud made a wholly different kind of debut; in upper New York State she established the Wolf Conservation Center. Her love for the endangered species was sparked by a chance encounter with a wolf in northern Florida which led to her determination to open an environmental education centre. She is also a member of the organisation Musicians for Human Rights. Her books include Variations Sauvages and Leçons Particulières.

Charlotte Rampling's distinguished career spans fifty years. Her many honours and awards include an OBE, the Legion d'Honneur, Best Actress from the European Film Academy for Swimming Pool and most recently the Best Actress Silver Bear at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival for 45 Years. Rampling's breakout role was in the film Georgy Girl in 1966. Her many films that followed include The Damned, Vanishing Point, Henry VIII and His Six Wives, The Night Porter, Farewell, My Lovely, The Verdict, Max, Mon Amour, On Ne Meurt Que Deux Fois, The Wings of the Dove and Under the Sand. More recently she has performed in The Statement, Immortel Ad Vitam, The Duchess, Never Let Me Go, The Eye of the Storm and Melancholia. On television she has appeared in ITV drama Broadchurch, HBO series Dexter and BBC's Restless. Rampling made her theatre debut to great acclaim in 2003 in Petits Crimes Conjugaux at Paris' Theatre Eduoard VII. Other stage credits include The False Servant (National Theatre), Strindberg's The Dance of Death (Théâtre de la Madeleine, Paris) and The Night Dances (international tour).

Commissioned by Manchester International Festival, HOME, Bergen International Festival/KODE, FAENA ART and MIF Creative.

Produced by Manchester International Festival. Supported by the Foyle Foundation and MIF Creative Circle.

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