THE MUSICAL MEMORY PALACE Sunday 7 February 2016, 5.30pm Southbank Centre, Royal Festival Hall Mozart Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K 550 Ed Cooke Grand Memory Master Nicholas Collon conductor Part of Southbank Centre’s Altered Minds Festival
Staged as part of Southbank Centre’s Altered Minds Festival, this concert invites audiences to take a journey in musical memory in the company of Ed Cooke, Grand Memory Master and founder of memrise.com, who can memorise the order of a deck of cards in less than a minute. Cooke applies the playful, imaginative and often hilarious ‘memory palace’ techniques which he uses to improve memory retention to Mozart’s 40th symphony, illuminating the genius and drama of Mozart’s writing and inviting audience members to astonish themselves with the power of their own memories. Nicholas Collon and Aurora Orchestra provide scintillating musical illustration, culminating in a memorised performance of the complete symphony. In an age in which memory is increasingly externalised in an online cloud, this concert promises to rediscover the joys of memorisation, as well as offering a thrilling new way of engaging with symphonic music. Dur: c. 80 mins, no interval