HISTORY’S best-known wordsmith receives a hip-hop makeover this week as The Romeo & Juliet Project is unveiled.
Nineteen Footscray City College students have been working with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to give a bold new twist to the work of William Shakespeare.
Young artists from the Massive Hip Hop Choir, Footscray City College and Mount Waverley’s Huntingtower School have joined forces to produce a work exploring the influence on music, text and theatre of the iconic tale of doomed young love.
Berlin-based Australian composer Catherine Milliken is leading the project alongside German vocalist Michael Schiefel and a team of MSO musicians.
MSO education manager Bronwyn Lobb says a key aim is building new relationships with young artists.
“In doing this, we are linking back to our core season programming and offering these young artists access to an all-star team of musicians.”
The project builds upon musical responses to Shakespeare’s text for Romeo & Juliet and Sergei Prokofiev’s much-loved score. Participating students and artists are intertwining their own personal responses with the themes of young love, generational conflict and feuding between families.
There will be two free public performances of The Romeo & Juliet Project in the Hamer Hall (Arts Centre Melbourne) foyer — at 7pm tomorrow and on Friday just before the MSO’s concert presentation of Romeo & Juliet with Bell Shakespeare in the hall.
