Italian composer, who won an Academy Award for ‘Best Original Score’ at last night’s ceremony, joins Elton John and The Corrs The Great Court at Blenheim Palace on the bill for four-day concert series, which takes place at The Great Court at Blenheim Palace from June 23rd – 26th 2016
The revered Italian composer Ennio Morricone, whose soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight was awarded ‘Best Original Score’ at last night’s Oscars ceremony, is confirmed as one of the headliners for this summer’s Nocturne concert series, which takes place at Blenheim Palace in June. Morricone will be giving his first ever UK performance outside of London and will open the series on Thursday June 23rd. He lines up on a high profile bill alongside The Corrs (Friday June 24th) and Elton John (Sunday June 26th), with the final headliner of the series to be announced in due course.
Morricone is widely regarded as one of the greatest, most prolific film composers of all time, having written over 500 scores for cinema includingThe Mission, Cinema Paradiso and the classic Italian westerns The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West. He has sold over 70 millions albums and received an honorary Oscar for “magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music” in 2007.
Morricone has been lauded with accolades for his work on The Hateful Eight and alongside the Oscar for ‘Best Original Score’, he has also recently won the Golden Globe Award for ‘Best Original Score’, a BAFTA Award for ‘Original Score’ and ‘Best Soundtrack’ at the New York Films Critics Award. For this much-anticipated concert at Nocturne he will conduct a 200-strong orchestra and choir, drawing on music from throughout his illustrious career.
Ennio Morricone:
“Performing my work live for people of so many different ages and cultural backgrounds is an incredibly gratifying experience. This year I celebrate my professional career of 60 years, during which I composed over 600 works. On this coming tour I will perform a whole new program with new highlights, which I am already working on. Of course there will always be the classic pieces from the great Sergio Leone westerns and The Mission. But overall the experience will be different this time. I plan to include music from my collaboration with Quentin Tarantino as well as a few works from the Leone Westerns that I have not included on previous tours”
Nocturne, which launched last year with sold-out shows from Ludovico Einaudi, Van Morrison and Gregory Porter, transforms The Great Court at Blenheim Palace into the ultimate open-air concert venue.
Ennio Morricone performs on Thursday June 23rd, The Corrs perform on Friday June 24th and Elton John and his band perform on Sunday June 26th.
Tickets for Ennio Morricone start at £45 and go on general sale on Thursday March 3rd at 9am. VIP packages are available, including fine dining in Sir Winston Churchill’s Long Library. See www.nocturnelive.comfor details.