uniting the creative spectrum
LINK orchestra isn't just an orchestra. It's an organisation that feeds creativity across all arts disciplines. Now more than ever, we need to rethink what is and isn't possible. LINK will facilitate a new way of looking at performance possibilities across the spectrum, and enable artists and creators to work together in increasing collaborative strength, in order to flourish and grow, inspite of, and in the face of challenging times.
ethos / vision
LINK orchestra exists to look into the future and support creativity and artists in new ways for our ever changing world. As an orchestra this will incorporate high quality musical performances, but with a multitude of other elements that have sprung out of a project-based approach.
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The LINK concept incorporates an arts organisation and orchestra that acts in a pioneering way to bridge the gap between different artistic disciplines, and audiences of all ages. To strike the balance between the old and the new.
Collaborating is about togetherness. It's about the germination of ideas. It's about growth. It's about cross-platform creation. It's about the cross-fertilisation of ideas across the creative spectrum, culminating in something that is far greater than the sum of the parts, due to the cross-fertilisation of music with all art forms including painting, dance, poetry, sculpture, photography, film-making, performance art, and a plethora of other genres incorporating innovation and science.
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LINK will act as a catalyst for a re-think in creativity in order to show new paths forward for the Arts in 2022 and beyond.
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musicians
LINK orchestra is a professional string orchestra made up of the cream of professional string players in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset.
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Exacting professional musical standards lie at the heart of what the orchestra represents, including an ethos of extensive rehearsal for both existing repertoire and new works, in order to present performances and arts projects of the highest calibre and innate musicality.
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founder / artistic director
James Barrett is a composer based near Totnes in Devon. He has had a career writing both classical concert works, and music for television, including orchestral commissions for Sir Roger Norrington, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Classical Brit and Grammy winner Alison Balsom, Wells Cathedral Choir, The Smith Quartet, and he has scored the music for David Attenborough films and a BAFTA nominated Aardman Animation series amongst many others. The diversity in his output has helped form and intensify his viewpoint and beliefs with regard to contemporary music.
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He has conducted film projects with orchestras from the Halle, Liverpool Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, and Budapest Festival Orchestra. His ambitions with LINK orchestra are to act as a facilitator and servant to great musical performance, and innovative arts projects.
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He has a deep-rooted interest in all types of music as a language, and the development of that language through the past four hundred years. He wants to explore the breaking down of integral parts of that language through the 20th century, with direct parallels in the visual arts, with what he sees as a 'rinascimento' or rebirth of musical values for the 21st century.
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James feels passionately about looking at anthropology in music as 'a social need and behaviour in modern society', particularly in times of extreme hardship. He believes in the fundamental importance of music as a necessary part of our everyday life, and as a calming, restorative force.
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LINK orchestra exists in part as a vehicle through which he can direct his own compositions as well as those of others. Composers know their own compositions in intimate detail, and it is his wish to seek the same exacting standards of performance for contemporary works, as is expected of standard repertoire.
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LINK orchestra will explore contemporary musical language through new musical and cross-platform projects.