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.
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.
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.
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
The show was closed by 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.
