Heavenly quartet to perform among the stars

ASTROPHILES can traverse the known universe accompanied by music from Angel Strings Quartet at the Bendigo Planetarium later this month.

The one-night event was originally a collaboration between a Brisbane venue and Angel Strings director and cellist Kathryn McKee.

Now the production is heading to Bendigo.

“I went to the planetarium in Bendigo once a week for about six months to work with visual programmers on the music to get it to match,” she said.

“There are elements where it goes way out in space, there are others where it focuses on the moon, some of them have spacecraft in them.”

The project was self-funded and McKee said it satisfied her interest of merging sound with other experiences.

“I love marrying visuals with music so for me the planetarium felt like the ultimate marriage of those things,” she said.

One challenge that faced the group during rehearsals was learning how to play in the dark.

“We’re reading from iPads with red screens to reduce light pollution, but also unable to see each other so we had to rehearse in the dark to get used to those circumstances,” McKee said.

The Angel Strings Quartet repertoire includes music from Phillip Glass, Ravel, Max Richter, and Karl Jenkins.

After the success of their first planetarium performance in Brisbane in May, McKee it was an easy decision to take to the show to other like venues.

Research led her to discover only three other planetariums in Australia equipped to host the experience, with Bendigo’s new space at the Discovery Centre one of them.

“When I phoned them about it, they said they had designed the space with creative events in mind and they were thrilled to collaborate on this,” she said.

Angel Strings will be on at the Bendigo Discovery Centre Planetarium on 20 October with three shows at 4pm, 5.30pm, and 6.30pm.

Tickets are available via the Bendigo Venues and Events website.