Coming to Light Up Southwark Cathedral with Music
St Bartholomew the Great church was the setting for the tour launch of In The Dark, a live music experience that takes away one of your senses and heightens another. When the lighting goes down, your eyes are covered with a mask, and 30 singers and musicians move silently around and among the audience. Your hearing becomes more attentive when you are blind, writes Michael Holland.
The troupe, in stockinged feet, were able to drift like mist throughout the church. A mandolin would be plucked to your left, a cello string pinged on your right, the sound of a clarinet would flow past you, while a choir would soar behind. ASMR sounds would waft around your head and ears and mind; you feel yourself moving and flowing with the waves of sound.
Between each passage of music, there would be a solemn silence before the voice of an angel kicks in from above, or one note of a bass throbs. More voices join in, then some percussion. The music came from all around. Sometimes from a distance, sometimes right there beside you.
After a while, all space and time fell away into a black hole of sound. Beautiful sound. Music you feel you could die to – Right here, right now.
The silences in between sometimes seemed to go on forever, and in the quiet, you momentarily think that everyone had gone. You have an impulse to reach out and touch your neighbour, just to feel someone, just to know you hadn’t been left alone. At times, I felt like there was nobody else there, just myself and the music.
We were told the performance would be 75 minutes long, but that became irrelevant once you’d succumbed to the sensation. Even the uncomfortableness of the spartan church chairs couldn’t stop you floating away to the sounds.
At the end, we were told we could take off the masks. The troupe were right there, standing in the aisle, smiling at us, smiling at the looks on our faces. The feeling was euphoric. Not because you could see again, but because that was what the experience made you feel. The musicians and singers knew that. They had seen it before.
This is not a conventional concert where the players are on a stage and the audience is in the auditorium. In The Dark is different; deliciously different – The audience becomes the stage.
In The Dark is coming to a place near you.
Booking and full tour details: https://www.seetickets.com/tour/in-the-dark
