How do you turn a building into a musical instrument? After three years of meticulous planning, Benedict Mason created MELD: a revolutionary piece of ‘sound theatre’ in which the Royal Albert Hall is as much a player and participant in the piece as the musicians themselves.

Commissioned by the BBC Proms, MELD featured 144 musicians from Aurora Orchestra and Chantage choir roaming the halls, corridors and hidden spaces of the Royal Albert Hall, performing Mason’s meticulous score entirely from memory. The score coordinated music with the physical geography of the hall, including hundreds of choreography maps detailing exactly where any one of the musicians are at any one time.

“All the musicians play throughout the whole hall. They also play while moving: some of them do carefully choreographed dances. Everything is very precisely organised and notated to the millisecond.” – Benedict Mason

Multiple roving cameras were used to capture the performance from every angle of the Albert Hall. Experience MELD for yourself on Aurora Play.

Filmed live at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday 16 August 2014. Film used by kind permission of The Space.
Free to watch on Aurora’s Youtube channel.
Footage courtesy of BBC Proms.