UK music festival Honeyfest has announced that Blur’s Damon Albarn will headline this year’s festivities, including set of songs from his opera, Doctor Dee.
Albarn wrote Doctor Dee alongside theater director Rufus Norris for the 2011 Manchester International Festival. The eclectic, critically-acclaimed opera is based on the life of Elizabethan scientist John Dee. Consultant to consultant to Queen Elizabeth I, Dee is known for working at the cusp of science and magic just as the two were being recognized as intrinsically separate fields of study.
Doctor Dee is not the first time that Albarn has tackled music theater productions: In 2007, he was part of the three-part creative team that brought us the stage adaptation of Monkey: Journey to the West, based on the 16th Century Chinese novel Journey to the West, and in 2009 Albarn wrote music for It Felt Like a Kiss, an immersive theater production.
According to NME, Honeyfest’s show will feature Albarn singing 10 songs along with some of the musicians who performed in the original production.
Check out the festival’s official site for more information on the upcoming events, and if you’re in the London area this summer, don’t miss performances of Doctor Dee at London’s Coliseum. Click here for more information.
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