Who is popular today?

Royal Albert Hall, LondonMark Simpson’s vibrant new work for Sean Shibe was the centrepiece of a polychromatic Prom that began with Strauss and ended with a vividly told Symphonie FantastiqueIn 1974 – six years after publishing Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – the sci-fi writer Philip K Dick had a hallucinatory experience, sparked by the reflection of light from a delivery woman’s necklace, that began a lasting obsession with an imaginary and elusive godlike being. He called this figure Zebra, on account of its propensity for camouflage – hence the title of Mark Simpson’s new electric guitar concerto for Sean Shibe, Zebra (or, 2-3-74: The Divine Invasion of Philip K Dick), the centrepiece of this polychromatic Prom from the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Anja Bihlmaier.It’s a conventional concerto in some ways: in three movements, fast, slow, fast. But, although the guitar carries the melodic line most of the time, it doesn’t hog the limelight: no Brian May on the palace roof posturing here. Instead, chameleon-like, it slips in and out of camouflage, blending with the orchestra then standing apart, and creating new sonorities. Guitar and muted trumpets wah-wah together; high pinprick notes merge into high violin glitter; in moments of stillness, the orchestra, augmented by synth and organ, traces an aura around the guitar that sounds like the result of a reverb pedal until this halo asserts an eerie presence of its own. Continue reading...