Taylor Mac: A 24-Decade History of Popular Music

Taylor Mac: A 24-Decade History of Popular Music description

A performance concert that travels 240 years of American popular song in a single evening.

Taylor Mac: A 24-Decade History of Popular Music works through the songs Americans sang to one another from 1776 onwards, moving decade by decade and treating popular music as a record of how communities come together and fall apart. Each era is reframed from the perspective of the people left out of its official account, and the audience is brought into the performance rather than left to watch from a distance.

The complete work runs 24 hours and was performed in full in New York in 2016. The version staged at the Royal Festival Hall is an abridged concert edition and marks the piece's UK orchestral premiere, performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra. It was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A filmed record of the full-length performance, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, streams on Sky Documentaries.

The piece is written and performed by Taylor Mac, a MacArthur Fellow and winner of the International Ibsen Award, whose plays include Hir and The Hang and who has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Matt Ray is music director and Ted Hearne has arranged the score for orchestra, with Alan Pierson conducting. Costumes are by Machine Dazzle, a long-standing collaborator whose designs shift with each decade covered.

Mac performs the evening solo, backed by the Philharmonia Orchestra. The production is presented by Pomegranate Arts and Nature's Darlings, runs approximately two hours and is recommended for ages 12 and over.

Book now for a single evening that carries American song from the eighteenth century to the present.

Playing at Royal Festival Hall

Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX GB (venue info)

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