What is The Alternative Orchestra?
The Alternative Orchestra is an umbrella company for a few different music ensembles and activities. The orchestra is the flagship, the bigger entity. So we could be anything from 8 -15 instruments up to 50 - 70 instruments and a choir. So far, we’ve been working as The Alternative Cabaret and doing smaller events with 2-8 people in the ensemble performing orchestral inspired music, so things like cellos and saxophones and clarinets alongside more pop instruments like guitars, keyboards, drums and singers. Our tagline is ‘Songs you know, but not as you know them’. It's a take on popular songs that people are already familiar with and transforming them in an orchestrally inspired way.
What can people expect from one of your performances?
Really fun, really relaxed. Songs that they know, just in an intriguing new way that makes them think about something that they haven't thought about the song before. So we've done slow ballad versions of dance and disco songs; We did Whitney Houston's ‘Dance with Somebody’, which if you actually listen to the lyrics, is quite a thoughtful song. It makes you see the song from a different angle instead of just thinking ‘there's this amazing dance song’, you see it from a different perspective.
What was it that inspired you to start this whole thing up?
I think singers, often quite rightly so, are always front and centre in these sorts of gigs, and then the orchestra or the ensemble are accompanying and somehow secondary. A lot of the orchestral stuff that goes on in Cardiff is quite similar, a lot of the orchestras out there are doing classical stuff and some crossover, but I think this is a lot more unique. I really wanted to shine a spotlight on the amazing instrumentalists that we've got in Wales.
Do you have a project that you feel most proud of being involved in?
Probably our Pride playlist, we did The Alternative Orchestra presents Pride playlist twice last year. It highlighted all the amazing pride artists, like Years & Years, Elton John, K.D Lang and then also the allied artists like Lady Gaga and Kylie Minogue. We did a different spin on some of that music where you delve deeper into the lyrics and the songs and you find what they're actually talking about rather than it just being a huge bop. Alongside our regular amazing performers we had a Cardiff drag queen as our special guest because she's got a hidden talent of being a classical pianist, so that really went with our flow of showcasing instrumentalists as well as singers.
What do you hope to achieve?
We are looking to bring orchestral music to a wider audience and to make it more accessible and less scary for people. You know, strings and brass in particular are used all over pop tracks, but people don't then associate that with a larger orchestra. Organisations like the Heritage Orchestra and some of the BBC Orchestras are doing tonnes to improve the ‘old fashioned’ image of orchestras, so I think we'd like to be the Wales based orchestra that spearheads that change.
We’re looking to remove the boundaries between the pop and the classical worlds and have them merge into each other so that people aren't quite as genre specific when they come to thinking about orchestral instruments.
What is so special about doing this work in Cardiff?
The music audience in Cardiff is really open to new ideas and really supportive of people trying new things. The social media following and the comments we get during and after are really supportive. I think it's just the culture of music in Wales and in Cardiff, it's really positive and I think it's a good place to be experimenting with new ideas.
Tell us about your future plans
We've done 00’s Pop Queens and Pride, and are planning 'One Hit Wonders’, ‘Guilty Pleasures’ and 'Boy Bands vs. Girl Bands’, to name a few. We might do a Welsh Legends one for Saint David's Day.
Then on a bigger scale, we're doing a live with orchestra film, where the orchestra plays the score of the film live with the film projected on the big screen. We’ve secured the rights to do the 2014 film Pride, which will involve local choirs a Tredegar Brass Band along with our The Alternative Orchestra. I’ve been prepping the music all summer and I’m so excited to start rehearsals! It’s a one-night-only 10th Anniversary Special performance at Swansea Arena on Friday 25 October, and tickets are available now.
How can people find out more and stay up to date with you?
There's a sign up form to our newsletter on our website, and our socials are all @TheAltOrch. Also, if you’re coming to a gig of ours, please come and have a chat! We love hearing how people found out about us and what they think of the gig.
