On August 7th Ben Walsh’s 10-piece band Orkestra of the Underground perform a live score to projected images from Shaun Tan’s book The Arrival at the Sydney Opera House’s Playhouse Theatre.
The last outing of the Orkestra was a mammoth project: to perform a live score to a french sci-fi animation Fantastic Planet, realised against all odds by Ben for the 2009 Sydney Festival. On that occasion, Ben composed a full score for the feature-length film, and without digital cues, conducted the whole thing live from behind the kit whilst we floated on a barge underneath the giant LED screen. The score was wild, bombastic and really, really fun for the 20 or so of us up there. The 2,000 or so people there to see it all go down at Darling Harbour seemed to dig it too.
The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that seem to come from a long-forgotten time. This masterpiece of visual storytelling has inspired superlative reviews and awards from across the globe. Sequential narrative, devoid of text, places a renewed focus on the illustrations to tell the story. The Arrival’s sepia toned work is some of the most compelling work produced – straddling the line between graphic novel and picture book.
Ben Walsh discovered The Arrival in a bookshop. He fell in love with the work and immediately imagined the whole story brought to life in sound. For three years Ben has dreamed of realising this musical vision and GRAPHIC provides the vehicle for his Orkestra of the Underground to breathe musical life into Shaun Tan’s beautiful illustrations.
Ben Walsh is a musical chameleon straddling genres, styles and performance mediums effortlessly and with aplomb. Ben Walsh has an innate talent for bringing talented individuals together around musical projects. His Orkestra Of The Underground pools the diverse and creative talent of Sydney’s local music scene towards composition projects.
As a composer Ben has scored Rene Laloux’s classic animated Science Fiction Film “Fantastic Planet” for the Sydney Festival, created numerous scores for major dance and physical theatre companies and scored three award-winning short films.
Venue: Playhouse
Dates: 7 August
Duration: 90 minutes with no interval
