October » 2010 » Julie Edwards Photography

Concert for Care

Ok, I’ll put my hands up straight away and say that this post is 3 or 4 days late but I really needed to take a break following the fantastic Concert for Care on Sunday and Monday.

I have mentioned in the past that I was official photographer for the event which started early on the Sunday morning with a special screening of Psycho at The Empire Leicester Square.

From here it was a rush down to the home of the London Symphony Orchestra; St. Lukes which was where the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra would be rehearsing along with the Composers and Conductors who where giving their time.

Robert Ziegler

My first impression was how different an orchestra sounds in an enclosed space compared with a concert hall. It took a few minutes to get used to the volume and concentrate on the task in hand; recording the event. The afternoon was a visual and aural feast with the shapes and movement of the instruments and musicians coupled with the wonderful sounds.

Anne Dudley and the RPO.

After a nice reception in the evening it was off to the Royal Albert Hall for further rehearsals all through Monday afternoon up until show time. The RAH is a wonderful building and having an empty hall during rehearsals meant I could explore positions and angles, accompanied by the sound of the RPO; bliss.

Christopher Gunning

The show started at 7:30 and to help cover this is twisted the arm of a fellow tog to cover the backstage area and green room. Earlier in the day I had set up a small “studio” with simple lighting to enable us to take a portrait of every performer. These will follow later.

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Between the rehearsals and the show we took a quick group photo; 2 strobes balancing the lighting held by 2 assistants. Took about 2 minutes but I think it is a wonderfully relaxed portrait;

(L-R) Rachel Portman, David Arnold, Michael Nyman, Craig Armstrong, John Ottman, Anne Dudley, Harry Gregson-Williams, George Fenton, Christopher Gunning, Johnny Greenwood, Patrick Doyle, John Powel, Dario Marianelli

During the concert Michael Nyman gave a wonderful solo performance on a panio which clearly was not placed to make a photographers task easy. I moved carefully into the audience and used a longer lens to capture this image

Michael Nyman

The show was closed by David Arnold.

David Arnold

Before I end, I owe considerable thanks to a number of people;

Firstly Jane Hobson for assisting on the evening of the concert, I could not have captured the performance if I had not been confident of the back stage cover.
Secondly The Royal Philharmonic for allowing me access to their rehearsal and making me jump halfway across St. Lukes.
Finally David Arnold and Tommy Pearson for asking me to help and putting faith in my photographic skills.

Back to the music.

Although the blog may have been empty over the past week or two, my diary has not. There was the premiere of “Eat Pray Love” (Julia Roberts), a corporate poker party and a few other small shoots.

In this time I have only shot 2 music events, both at the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. It’s a lovely building although not always the easiest to shoot at. The first event, just over a week ago was the “Orange Rock Corps”; a free gig for persons who had volunteered for community projects. The line-up included PlanB, Tao Cruse and N-Dubz. The acts moved at a fair pace but I managed to keep up, filling the images to my agency between acts. The headline act were Pendulum:

Pendulum

Last night I was back there again for a special one off A-Ha gig where they played the whole of thier “hunting high and low” . As we only have the first three songs it is always nice when the artist starts with a well known number, in this case it was “take on me”, their first and biggest hit.

The audience were seated and so there was no pit. We therefore kept low in front of the first row and in the aisles. Its always interesting to see which shots other photographers post from concert shoots. I always try to vary mine and in this post I have chosen two images that show the artist in context with the audience and the hall.

Morten Harket

Next week starts with the “Despicable Me” premiere and finishes with a residency at The Albert Hall in my capacity of official photographer for the “Concert for Care“. If you have not brought tickets for this Or the screening, time is running out!