Story of a lifetime - We live. We love. We dream. We die.
Vlaams Radiokoor, Marcus Creed
A woman muses as she looks back on her life. She strings together her recollections, from the many ordinary but unforgettable moments through major achievements and bitter failures, to the first still burning love transformed into familiar closeness – and to the end: bidding farewell.
In ‘Story of a Lifetime’; the Radiokoor performs the soundtrack to the life story of a very ordinary woman – you, or I, or the woman in the street. She gives us the gift of her life in images and music, and memories that slip past us. The party where she meets her partner, the fresh love that gradually turns into the ordinary but cherished moments they share, the minutiae and disappointments in each other, the dissipation of passion and the final farewell. Unremarkable and banal – but also very special: for it is her story, and is thus unique.
The soundtrack includes contemporary a capella works, arrangements of pop music and French chansons alongside each other. The Passing of the Year by Jonathan Dove is the golden thread through the evening, a musical metaphor for life, which passes by irrevocably. Soprano Kelly Poukens brings the woman to life, as a flesh and blood person filled with emotion: in the intimate chansons, accompanied by just a piano or guitar, she becomes the woman who thinks back on her life with her beloved, and so recounts her Story of a Lifetime.
Between the works, Stef Van Alsenoy's surround soundscapes provide fragments and memories that support the story.
Flagey, Brussels Philharmonic, Vlaams Radiokoor
