‘The Sad Album’ is a powerful, exhilarating new music-theatre work by Laura Bowler and lovemusic collective. Blending raw personal stories with explosive sound, movement and dark humour, it transforms grief into a thrilling live experience. Through virtuosic performance and choreographed chaos, the show invites audiences into an intense, intimate and unforgettable journey through loss, laughter and survival.
The Sad Album is an excavation of the darker, stranger, and more tender aspects of grief. Composer and singer Laura Bowler and the musicians of lovemusic have shared stories, laughed, cried, and raged in an effort to understand – and dismantle – the masks people wear when confronting the loss of someone they love. This new show, premiered at Musica Festival in Strasbourg, offers a journey through the voids left behind, magnified frustrations, and celebrated mundanities, gathered over a year and a day of filling and amplifying grief’s silences and absurdities.
Slipping between the universal and the personal, the raw and the precise, the comic and the tragic, The Sad Album explores a permanently altered reality. Drawing from psychological and neurological research, but also deeply personal testimony from the artists, in this visceral and explosive new work, lovemusic are happy to talk about being sad.
The Sad Album pushes the performers to the limits of physical expression. A torrent of text pours from Bowler, while the musicians perform vertiginous loops. True to lovemusic’s performance style, the artists are physically involved in the performance, creating an hour of choreographed chaos that grapples with the impossibility of defining grief.
Laura Bowler voice and keyboard
Emiliano Gavito flute
Adam Starkie clarinet
Emily Yabe violin
Céline Papion cello
Christian Lozano Sedano electric guitar
Marin Lambert percussion
Finbar Hosie electronics and sound
Sam Redway dramaturg
This event will last approximately 70 minutes, with no interval.
Venue:Hall Two
Price:£25
Reviews
‘With the Strasbourg-based collective lovemusic […], the British artist [Laura Bowler] has created a score that is torn, violent and almost chaotic […] It is a work that is both musical and literary, carried by an ensemble at the very highest level and by a remarkable author.’ Maurice Ulrich, L’Humanité
‘Strikingly contemporary, this musical theatre piece explores the experience of grief with an irresistible, whimsical lightness, elevated by beautifully inventive staging.’ Jérôme Provençal, Les Inrockuptibles
The Sad Album was commissioned by lovemusic collective with the support of the Ernst Von Siemens Music Foundation.
Supported by the DRAC Grand Est, the Conseil Régional Grand Est, the City of Strasbourg, the patronage of Caisse des Dépôts, Diaphonique, Franco-British-Irish fund for contemporary music, in partnership with the SACEM, the Friends of the French Institute Trust, the British Council, the Institut français, the Institut français du Royaume-Uni, the Centre National de la Musique, Culture Ireland and the Salabert Fondation, and the Spedidam.
The Sad Album was commissioned by lovemusic collective with the support of the Ernst Von Siemens Music Foundation.
Supported by the DRAC Grand Est, the Conseil Régional Grand Est, the City of Strasbourg, the patronage of Caisse des Dépôts, Diaphonique, Franco-British-Irish fund for contemporary music, in partnership with the SACEM, the Friends of the French Institute Trust, the British Council, the Institut français, the Institut français du Royaume-Uni, the Centre National de la Musique, Culture Ireland and the Salabert Fondation, and the Spedidam.