Following on the heels of an artist-in-residency at the Playground Theatre, pianist and composer, Rosey Chan, will perform new, original material composed by her, set against a multi-media installation created with celebrated film director, Mike Figgis. During this solo appearance, "Rosey Chan Live in Concert", Chan will play contemporary classical, electronica, jazz and spoken word material, demonstrating her unconventional mastery of diverse musical styles and traditions.
After graduating from the Royal College of Music, Chan enjoyed a career as a classical pianist, playing at venues including
Carnegie Hall and
Royal Albert Hall. But her penchant for improvisation and collaboration soon led her to abandon the career of a classical musician in favour of composing and performing across different styles and disciplines. Highly emotional and expressive, Chan's writing is matched only by a virtuoso technique termed "flawless" by
Quincy Jones. Chan is also a Steinway artist.
Long before the ascendancy of "contemporary classical" and "classical electronica", Chan was interweaving disparate influences into her composition and performance beginning with her album, One, produced by Sting, an eclectic compilation of piano pieces ranging from Chopin to
Tom Waits. Whereas that album demonstrated Chan's unusually deft ability to toggle between wildly different musical genres, her new album, "8 Years of My Life", is a tour de force of composition and comprises all-new material written by Chan including jazz, electronica and a spoken word piece with Fanny Ardant.
Chan considers each performance an integrated 360° dramaturgy and eschews the static presentations associated with classical music. At the Playground Theatre, Chan will play different instruments against a dynamic panorama of moving image created and produced by Figgis. Figgis is best known for directing critically acclaimed Hollywood movies such as Internal Affairs and Leaving Las Vegas but is, in fact, a multi-disciplinary artist who has eschewed Hollywood in order to pursue a more experimental, multi-disciplinary approach to film-making. In addition to directing, Figgis regularly teaches, curates and writes books and articles on cinema techniques.
The intimate setting of the experimental Playground Theatre provides the perfect environment for blurring the lines not only between different forms of music but between audience and artist.
The Playground Theatre's mission is to work with both established and emerging artists in the UK and internationally. The ethos is one of cross-fertilization between different forms and different cultures with the aim of creating work that is bold and imaginative, while fully engaging the rich diversity of the community of which it is a part. Since the theatre opened in November 2017 productions have included Picasso by Terri D'Alfonso, The Little Prince written and performed by Martin Oelbermann, Soldier On by
Jonathan Guy Lewis and the current Shirleymander by Gregory Evans.
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