Schwarzman Centre, Oxford
Nitin Sawhney’s eclectic global fusion brings in new writings from Harvey, drawings by Antony Gormley and collaborations from academics in space and ecosystems
Samantha Harvey’s Booker-winning novel Orbital ends in music – an ecstatic word-orchestra of sound summoning not the music of the spheres, but Earth itself: “the rin-tin-tin and jumbled tumbling of static galactic woodwind rainforest trance of a wild and lilting world”. It’s a brave person who’d try to turn those imagined sounds into soundtrack; enter Nitin Sawhney – multi-award-winning musician, composer and producer – and a team of seriously starry friends.
Commissioned by Oxford University’s Schwarzman Centre, Orbiting Orbital is a bewilderingly broad project that brings together six new pieces of writing by Harvey, music (old and newly composed) by Sawhney, drawings by Antony Gormley, photographs by Mary McCartney, as well as collaborations with academic in fields as disparate as space instrumentation and ecosystem science. All these elements are combined in a live event that’s part-concert, part-symposium, part show-and-tell, scaled up to stadium scope with video projections, band, choir and orchestra.