Anglia Ruskin University staged a world premiere with a difference in Cambridge on Monday, 14 November - Terra Nova, a concerto for orchestra, laptop ensemble and computer game player!

Written especially for Anglia Sinfonia and the Mechanical and Electroacoustic Music Ensemble (MEME) by Dr Julio d'Escriván, Reader in Creative Music Technology, the piece marked the 100th anniversary of the British Antarctic Expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

Terra Nova used the medium of a computer game featuring 3D recreations of the Antarctic landscape, projected on to a large screen, to commemorate Scott's ill-fated expedition. The audiovisual materials were drawn from original archive footage held in the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, including digital copies of the original Herbert Ponting photographs from the expedition.

In the piece the computer game was played live by its designer, Matt Hollis, while the music provided a set of cues that follow the player through the Antarctic terrain. Conducted by Paul Jackson, Head of the department of Music and Performing Arts, Anglia Sinfonia and MEME revived the early cinematic practice of playing live music to accompany images.

Dr Julio d'Escriván said:

"This is the first time a number of laptops have been integrated with an orchestral ensemble at Anglia Ruskin, and must be one of the relatively few times this has been done worldwide.

"Much like in the days of silent film, the orchestra and laptops have set music that they play to a beat but it will also involve personal choices made by the musicians and directed by the conductor.

"The challenge is that while with a film you know in advance where the cues should go, here the musicians must adapt to whatever happens during the gameplay, even 're-spawning' music if the player 'dies' and needs to restart the level."

The concept of 'new lands' continued in Luciano Berio's 1965 masterpiece for singers, actors and orchestra, Laborintus 2, which was performed after Terra Nova. Written to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the birth of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, Laborintus 2 presents an amalgamation of poetry, vocalisation, music and electronic sounds, drawing on themes from Dante's La Vita Nuova (The New Life) and The Inferno.

The concert drew much interest in the press, with Julio appearing on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, BBC Look East, and on the BBC website as well as in the local press.


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