Nitin Sawhney: Orbiting Orbital

Nitin Sawhney brings Orbiting Orbital to the Sohmen Concert Hall at the Schwarzman Centre on Friday 6 November, as part of the Utopia Now! season. It's a multi-disciplinary work premiered by Fantasia Orchestra, and it takes its starting point from Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital, a lyrical meditation on life aboard a space station. Sawhney has paired six new poems by Harvey with six new pieces of music, and added a special new cantata on top of that, alongside some of his more familiar works.

On stage, Sawhney will be on piano and guitar, joined by Aref Durvesh on tabla and dholak, Eos Counsell on violin, and vocals from Shapla Salique and YVA, with Tom Fetherstonhaugh conducting. The whole thing is described as a meditation on the value of humanity and our planet, and it doesn't stop at the music: Antony Gormley contributed six specially selected drawings and Mary McCartney provided photographs, which together offer shifting perspectives on identity, human connection and a world beyond borders. The poems, the music, the drawings and the photographs all run alongside each other, so it's as much about what you see as what you hear.

It's a big, cross-disciplinary piece, and the combination of Sawhney's music with Harvey's poetry and the contributions from Gormley and McCartney means it's more of a staged experience than a standard concert. The evening runs for two hours including an interval, and it's recommended for ages 12 and over. You'll find it at the Sohmen Concert Hall, Schwarzman Centre, Woodstock Rd, Oxford OX2 6GG, starting at 7:30 pm on Friday 6 November.