HomeMain MenuPress ReleasesDear Esther: A live music and gaming experience, featuring Jessica Curry’s original...

Dear Esther: A live music and gaming experience, featuring Jessica Curry’s original soundtrack

Dear Esther: A live music and gaming experience, featuring Jessica Curry’s original soundtrack

Friday 14 October 2016 / Milton Court Concert Hall / 19:30 Tickets £22.50 plus booking fee

In 2012 the UK game company The Chinese Room released first person game Dear Esther and created a new genre of videogames. Nearly five years on, Dear Esther remains a landmark in gaming, internationally renowned for its deep, rich storytelling, extraordinary art and powerfully emotive score by BAFTA winning composer Jessica Curry.

In this newly devised world premiere event as part of the Barbican’s contemporary music programming at Milton Court Concert Hall, Jessica Curry joins the musical team behind The Chinese Room’s critically acclaimed soundtracks for a live performance of the Dear Esther game. Featuring Nigel Carrington, the game’s BAFTA-nominated narrator as well as Jessica’s live band featuring strings, electronics and vocals, and writer and producer Dan Pinchbeck as the live player, the evening will take audiences on a dark, compelling and ultimately uplifting journey. The music on stage will be triggered by the game protagonist’s progress and audiences will experience a complete play-through of the game.

The setting of the game sees a man standing on a lonely and desolate Hebridean island, unsure whether it is real or just a figment of his grieving imagination. Weaving a complex and poetic tale of love, loss and redemption, Dear Esther journeys to a car crash on the M5, to the crisis of faith of a guilty heart, to the forgotten words of an eighteenth century hermit, to the lost shores of a dreamed shoreline and to a final ascent through the waters of madness to the release of flight.

Dear Esther proves that videogames are capable of musical, narrative and artistic expression that stands proudly alongside film, literature and classical music.

Curve Digital will be releasing enhanced PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Dear Esther this autumn to coincide with this new live event.

Produced by the Barbican
On sale to Barbican Members on Thursday 21 June 2016
On general sale on Friday 22 June 2016
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