EIGHT weeks of sleepless nights for the Indian-British musician, producer and composer, Nitin Sawhney led to the creation of thought provoking music for BBC Human Planet series concert, which featured at the Proms on Saturday (23).
Nitin Sawhney told the expectant audience at the Royal Albert Hall: “I was very impressed by the central theme for nature and was required to create music for pictures that speak for themselves. The extreme conditions that had to portrayed allowed great amount of imagination for the musician and so I wanted to do it.”
The Human Planet Prom was inspired by the landmark BBC 1 TV series and accompanying BBC Radio 3 series, Music Planet. It featured music from the series by Nitin Sawhney and was performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Charles Hazlewood. It included contributions from Greenland, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, the Sakha Republic, which is part of Russia and Zambia.
The Human Planet Prom was presented by John Hurt, the voice of the BBC One series and included big-screen highlights from the TV series.
He said: “The cinematography for the series was of such a high level that I hadn’t experienced anything to a similar level in the last twenty years of experience in the television and film industry.
Working alongside the best of directors was great. Producing music for the series was a very emotional and fulfilling experience.”
There was also a performance by the BBC Concert Orchestra using instruments that had been made out of junk, broken furniture and contents of roadside skips. The concert was the climax of a new documentary, Scrapheap Orchestra, for BBC Four to be broadcast in the autumn.
The Shark Calling Group from Papua New Guinea had a striking performance. Eight performers with guitars and drums, dressed in long yellow straw costumes, shook instruments with circular rings on them, while holding artificial fishes in hand simply created a live atmosphere of experience. Two of the team danced while the rest sang the tunes.
