Progressive Rock
Rick Wakeman is taking part in Starmus VIII – The Search For Truth, the science and music festival held in Tenerife and La Palma from 17 to 22 October, with a piece for piano and chamber orchestra based on the lectures of astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. The festival programme places it on Sunday 18 October at the Pirámide de Arona, under the title “Echoes from Black Holes” and to be performed only once. He performs it with Moldovan violinist and composer Rusanda Panfili.
“In October I’m doing STARMUS VIII – The Search For Truth, a big piece for piano and chamber orchestra that’s based on the lectures of Stephen Hawking, which I’m really looking forward to, and also next year I’m headed off to South America,” he tells Classic Rock. “But I am slowing down.”
Starmus was founded in 2011 by Brian May and astronomer Garik Israelian. At this edition May performs with tenor Andrea Bocelli and soprano Sarah Brightman.
Wakeman arrives having just released “Return to the Red Planet”, nine tracks out on 16 October via Madfish and a sequel to “The Red Planet” (2020). He filmed the promotional videos at the Airbus space facility in Stevenage, where the craft bound for space are tested on a recreation of the Martian surface. “I did check my British Airways air miles and there were not enough for a trip to Mars, so they kindly allowed us to go in and do some filming,” he says.
The other thing he has in hand is an open-air piano concert at a sanctuary in Vietnam for an audience of bears. Wakeman is an ambassador for Animals Asia, which rescues moon bears from the bile trade; Vietnam has banned the farms and the animals move into sanctuaries. “Obviously I can’t go into the cages,” he says, “but they’re building a stage and we bring along a grand piano. The funny thing is, for the last few months they’ve been playing them some of my piano albums, so that the bears have an idea of what to expect.” The concert has not taken place yet.
In December he plays six Christmas dates around Britain with his son Oliver, “A Hint Of Christmas”, and in February and March 2027 he has eighteen more billed as “Wizard Of Prog”.
Text by Guillem Cardós