Nicola Lisle looks forward to a festival’s Faustian-inspired music show

Scenery-chewingly fantastic” is how curator Matthew Sharp describes The Devil’s Jukebox, a two-hour musical and visual extravaganza coming to the Wilderness Festival on Saturday.

Conceived by Matthew and Opera North, the show premiered at the Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, in October 2012 as part of the city’s Light Night festival, and explores devil-inspired music by an eclectic mix of composers, from Tartini and Paganini to Radiohead.

“It spans about 400 years of irresistible tunes,” explains Matthew. “So there’s things like the Devil’s Trill Sonata by Tartini, where things get a bit surreal, and there’s a couple of lines from Radiohead’s Pyramid Song, about angels and darkness.

“It will appeal to a broad section of people, young and old, virgins and veterans of classical music and other kinds of music.”

Other music featured in the show includes the famous supper scene from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade, Mephistopheles’ aria Le veau d’or from Gounod’s Faust, Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, Mussorgsky’s Song of the Flea, Stravinsky’s Danse du Diable, Beck’s Devil’s Haircut and many more.

So is there a plot binding these disparate pieces together?

“It’s more like an immersive musical experience than something with a narrative,” Matthew says. “It’s about these different, very strong flavours, and what they conjure for an audience. At times it might be shocking, at other times you’ll get seduced or lulled into a very gentle place.

“There’s a Romance by Piazzolla, which has a dance to it as well, which is very gentle-natured.”

The show also has visual appeal. “There’s going to be some dancers, and some video projections during the show, and there’s special lighting.

“At times it will be epic, at times quite intimate even on that big stage, then it will pare itself back to just a single voice and a couple of instruments for something searing and heartbreaking.”

A freelance cellist and operatic baritone, Matthew will be playing and singing in the show, along with an impressive line-up including David Le Page (violin), David Gordon (piano/harpsichord), Miloš Milivojević (accordion), Ben Harlan (clarinet), Graham Instrall (percussion), Anna Dennis (soprano) and Carolyn Dobbin (mezzo).

Described by The Times as a “virtuoso of the arts”, Matthew combines his performing career with his passion for creating projects that push musical boundaries and appeal to a broad section of people.

“What I’m interested in is creating the means for audiences to have a fabulous night out experiencing amazing music,” he says. “A concert hall is fine, but it’s often not very conducive to an amazing night out.

“So I’m into finding ways to make that relationship between the audience and the performers really human. It might be a site-specific experience or a more formal setting, but that human touch is very important to me.

“It’s music for the people and music for the world, so why not give it the chance to be in front of thousands of people, in a very broadly appealing environment.”

Where & When
The Devil’s Jukebox
Wilderness Festival, Cornbury Park
Saturday, 8.15pm 
wildernessfestival.com or operanorth.co.uk