Programme Note
Composer note: The Orchestral Theatre series had its origin in some musings about the place of music in the world, and of humanity in society and in nature. Music which clearly separates the role of performer from listener, of orchestra from audience, seems usual to modern concert-goers. Actually, such isolation began only a few hundred years ago, while the history of music as an integral part of spiritual life, as ritual, as shared participation, is as old as humanity itself. The idea of an "orchestral theatre" gradually came to me as a way of finding this lost unity and bringing the performing arts back to the audience. I began to see the orchestra itself as a dramatic medium which could once again bridge the creative and the re-creative, completing the circle of spiritual life.
— Tan Dun