Constella derives from constellation, meaning ‘a grouping of stars’, and the bringing together of professional musicians, dancers, artists, and historians lies at its heart
Constella Music aims to harness the expressive power of music for social good, an ambition driven by its clearly lovely (not to mention copiously talented) founder, artistic director and conductor Leo Geyer. Geyer essentially is the company, working alongside Managing Director Nathalie de Potter and Administrator Susan Carter to bring his impressive portfolio to the stage, which ranges from opera and dance to film and concert music. As you might imagine, Constella derives from constellation, meaning ‘a grouping of stars’, and the bringing together of professional musicians, dancers, artists, and historians lies at its heart. Constella has even collaborated with a garden designer, winning a medal for a show garden based on Geyer’s music at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Sadler’s Wells’ Lilian Baylis theatre hosts Constella Music’s 10th Anniversary Concert, simultaneously marking an official rebrand and expansion of Constella OperaBallet, as the company was formerly known. The show celebrates ten years since Geyer launched the first Constella Orchestra concert series aged just nineteen, and features a selection of re-imagined pieces, premieres, and excerpts from upcoming projects. After a few technical difficulties in hearing from patron Willard White, we move straight into London Portraits, a contemporary classical music and jazz fusion opera-ballet for piano and voice. While veritable songbird Sofia Kirwan-Baez’s soprano is outstanding, the piece falls flat; routine observations on urban life are set to a bizarre dance sequence, seemingly inspired by Gene Kelly’s performance in Singing in the Rain, complete with umbrella. The four dancers’ movements are obscured by oversized suits, which have the unfortunate effect of simply being ill-fitting. These young artists are skilled and passionate – it’s frustrating they haven’t been given something fresh to wear, let alone to dance to.
Thankfully Toby Hughes’ premiere live rendition of Water Boatman, Geyer’s complex, stirring piece for double-bass and loop pedal, is remarkable, with soaring harmonics and impressive bariolage segments layered over the expert, rumbling manipulation of lower strings. Next on the programme, the showcase of Connecting Stars, Constella’s virtual and interactive performance programme makes clear the joy Constella has brought to so many. Geyer explains how he set up the initiative over the first lockdown after streaming live concerts for his isolated Grandma: inspired by the positive feedback received from herself and other residents in the care home, Connecting Stars has now given over 1500 virtual performances across the UK, winning the company ‘Most Innovative Performing Arts Organisation’ in the Acquisition International Non-Profit Awards.
The final section of the evening is composed of excerpts from the company’s in-progress opera-ballet The Orchestras of Auschwitz, a product of seven years of work in collaboration with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, historians and holocaust survivors to restore previously unheard arrangements written in the concentration camp. Nothing can really prepare you for hearing the jarringly upbeat, marching band-style songs as prisoners would have been forced to play them, nor the compositions written by the prisoners themselves. Geyer highlights the rebellion in the orchestras’ covert playing of non-German tunes, including ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’ by American composer John Philip Sousa and ‘St Mary’s Trumpet Call’, a Polish bugle call. Ultimately, however, it feels in poor taste to place these pieces within a programme of disparate parts. The Orchestras of Auschwitz project is a laudable one, and the music of shocking gravity; a dedicated full length production would do greater justice, as will be the case throughout a scheduled 2025 premiere and European tour. As a whole, Constella Music’s 10th anniversary launch suffers from incongruous tonal shifts, and an unpolished feel at times. More thoughtful programme curation and careful attention to production detail would raise the bar to the starry heights Constella Music deserves.