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Aaron Holloway-Nahum’s Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale…is based on a surreal poem by Dan Albergotti, which, once more, has been given new meanings through the lens of the pandemic: for the belly of a whale, read our individual lockdown rooms. This richly layered multimedia work invited us into the imaginary location with humour by turns dark and wry, and the four performers added precisely imagined evocative sound with their principal instruments and percussion….
The committed playing of the instrumentalists echoed around the hall. The impassively expert conductor, Aaron Holloway-Nahum, stationed off to one side of the stage, held everything together firmly, without fuss.
In addition to his fantastic work as a composer, I have also worked with Aaron the conductor - a great experience, as he brings the understanding of both. Aside from his professionalism, Aaron is sensitive to and supportive of his peers, and always willing to challenge people to do their very best work.
…the star for me was Naomi Pinnock’s (it looks like someone lived there), a setting - more a solution, really - of a line from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Listening, I could only think: this is what a Woolf setting should sound like…Aaron Holloway-Nahum’s conducting, to sustain the momentum of this slow disintegration, was superbly controlled. But really the piece is a gift. ‘I don’t know how she does so much with…almost nothing’, he told me afterward.
