Hot on the heels of GRAND TOUR Baroque Road Trip, Murphy and the NDA have recorded their next album, JET SET.
Moving from the Baroque into the heady, inspired atmosphere of the early classical period, the album follows members of the 18th century's musical JET SET as they do the glittering cultural epicentres of the time, including London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and St Petersburg. The album features symphonies by Abel and Reichardt, and arias by Paisiello, Storace and Mozart. In the double role of conductor and soloist, Murphy performs the Zelter Viola Concerto in E Flat.
Grammy award-winning sound-engineer Jean-Marie Geijsen and producer Karel Bruggeman (Polyhymnia) headed up the recording team for the May 2017 sessions in the historic Gothic Hall, Council of State in The Hague.
JET SET will be Murphy and the NDA's 7th album with Dutch label PENTATONE.
Enthusiastically reviewed in the Dutch press as "fresh and playful Baroque - a feast for the eyes and ears" in which "the theatrical elements worked beautifully", this November in the Netherlands, Simon Murphy presented a new production of his "Baroque Burlesque" "18th Century Variety Show", Mrs Cornelys' Entertainments.
Featuring Swedish Baroque dancer Karin Modigh in the title role, the production explores the glittering world of the infamous Mrs Cornelys a.k.a. The Empress of Pleasure, her scandalous masked balls of the 1760's and 1770's, and related figures including Lord Sandwich, actor and playwright Garrick, designer Chippendale, and the composers JC Bach and Abel.
Based on a concept by Simon Murphy, the new production follows the successful 2012 pilot. The show features arias, songs, instrumental and dance music by Abel, JC Bach, Handel, Boyce, Cimarosa, Gluck, Dittersdorf and Mozart, script by Simon Murphy, and choreographies by Karin Modigh and Caroline Copeland.
Murphy and the NDA will tour the show internationally from 2017, featuring new costumes currently being designed and created by Swedish costumier Anna Kjellsdotter.
Simon Murphy will make his début with the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra (OPS) this December.
Taking audiences on a musical road trip of 18th century European symphonic centres, Murphy will conduct a series of concerts of Mozart arias and symphonies in a programme specially created by him for the French orchestra.
Following Murphy's pioneering research and performance work on the birth of the symphony and symphony orchestra, the programme features several of his musical discoveries including the Symphony in E flat by J Schmitt a.k.a. "The Dutch Haydn". The performance opens with a newly edited symphony by Mannheim master FX Richter who preceded Pleyel as head of music at Strasbourg Cathedral which celebrates its millennium jubilee (1015 - 2015) this coming year.
German soprano Gudrun Sidonie Otto appears as the programme's soloist in works by JC Bach, Cimarosa, Paisiello and Mozart. The programme concludes with Mozart's "Haffner" Symphony.
