Grimm’s Fairy tales | The girl with no hands | Steven Mackey

Ensemble Klang premiere a new project created with GRAMMY-winning composer Steven Mackey. Mackey’s music is brightly coloured, ecstatically inventive, lively and profound. Also an electric guitarist, Mackey’s music weaves improvisatory riffs into large-scale works of grooving, dramatic coherence.

This new work The Girl With No Hands brings together music and story for Ensemble Klang and an actor. This dark tale from the brothers Grimm is adapted for this project by author/storyteller Adam Gidwitz, creator of the podcast Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest. The music embraces and enhances the occasional magic and whimsical discontinuity present in these fairy tales. And while the story is one of the darker tales from the brothers Grimm there is a happy ending!

The programme also includes new works by Alam Hernández Ramirez, another electric guitar-playing composer, who like Mackey merges an academic training with the ‘free-spirited physicality of rock music’ to conjure a visceral music, one for both head and heart.