The Mother
In 2018 I worked on a new contemporary ballet by Arthur Pita which is an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s dark fairy tale, starring two celebrated dancers; internationally acclaimed classical ballerina Natalia Osipova, and multi-award winning Jonathan Goddard.
The score and sound design was created in an exciting musical collaboration with composer and multi-instrumentalist Frank Moon and the piece features both of us performing live.
Performances include Edinburgh, Moscow, Sochi and Southbank Centre, London.
★★★★★ The Telegraph ★★★★ The Guardian
★★★★ The Independent ★★★★ Evening Standard
The Mother
- Compellingly nightmarish…Frank Moon and Dave Price’s music, performed live, has an echoing percussive base to it, with added Slavonic dance themes on fiddle and flute.
- The Stage
- Choreography, visuals and music all combine here to create something very special. There are so many layers to this work that one viewing of a performance is simply not enough to do much more than skim the surface of its deep and dark waters. Natalia and Jonathan are obviously the visual centres of this on stage world, but so much of not only the feel of this production, but its whole atmosphere, is due to inspired music by the gifted composers and multi instrumentalists Frank Moon and Dave Price who have created truly original and powerful music for this production.
- Southside Advertiser
- A hauntingly beautiful soundscore… Musicians Frank Moon and Dave Price, along with their array of instruments, flank each side of the stage creating a dialogue and visible relationship between themselves and the dancers. Every note and every sound has its place, and the pair help elevate this nightmarish world, providing an eerie, mythical landscape of sound in which the story sits.
- In Covent Garden
- Live music composed/played by Frank Moon and Dave Price is by turns lyrical, abrasive, screeching – a mood board for Osipova’s dramatic long dark night of the soul.
- The Herald
- The mood is set, and impressively maintained over 90 minutes, by musician-composers Frank Moon and Dave Price, each marooned on an island of musical kit to right and left of the stage. Their semi-improvised whines, howls, creaks and folk-melodising on fiddle, flute, balalaika and countless other analogue instruments both background and foreground the show with a multi-layered virtuosity.
- The Arts Desk
- Composers Frank Moon and Dave Price are on either side of the stage, surrounded by percussion instruments, ocarinas, xylophones, guitars, flutes and violins which they play as required (on top of singing, beatboxing and whistling), providing a responsive, live accompaniment that fluctuates between wordless vocal music, liturgical chant, lyrical melody and atmospheric soundscape.
- Bachtrack
