Paul McCartney composes orchestral work for a ballet
Published 4:00 am Sunday, February 27, 2011
In an unexpected intersection of celebrity pop music and ballet — that most refined of the performing arts — Paul McCartney has written a major orchestral work for the New York City Ballet.
It is a love story titled “Ocean’s Kingdom” and will have its premiere at the company’s fall gala Sept. 22, with other performances on dates to be announced next season, McCartney and company officials said Wednesday. City Ballet’s ballet master in chief, Peter Martins, will create the choreography.
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In its current state the ballet is about 45 to 50 minutes long, has four acts and a cast of about 40 to 45, including four or five main roles. A composer, John Wilson, is helping with the final orchestration, and the first act is to be played through Thursday at the David H. Koch Theater, the company’s home at Lincoln Center.
McCartney first mentioned that he was working on a ballet score in an interview with the BBC in June and set off speculative babble among balletomanes and pop music fans this month when he said that an announcement was coming soon.
In his first interview about the work, McCartney, speaking by telephone in New York on Wednesday, called it “basically a romantic story” involving two worlds: the ocean kingdom, representing purity, and the earth kingdom, inhabited by “the sort of baddies.” The daughter of the ocean king falls in love with the brother of the earth king, and “you’ll have to see whether the couple make it,” McCartney said.