Royal BALLET AND OPERA

Since 2011 CHROMA has premiered nine works and performed five revivals with the Royal Ballet and Opera, at the Linbury Studio Theatre, in the West End and at the Lyric Hammersmith. The Royal Opera also hosted the 2019 Royal Philharmonic Society opera workshops for Women Conductors, which CHROMA was involved in for the contemporary sessions using George Benjamin’s IntoThe Little Hill as material, and led by Jessica Cottis. In 2020, between lockdowns CHROMA recorded the score for the hyper-reality opera Current, Rising installed in the Linbury Theatre during May and June 2021.

4.48 PSYCHOSIS

adapted from the play by Sarah Kane by Philip Venables Royal Opera House at the Lyric Hammersmith. Revival April 2018

"grips and moves all over again in this first revival...it's a virile, magpie kind of score, equally peppered with militant stomps, baroque lamentations and the fiery duets of two percussionists banding out the rhythms of unspoken dialogue projected onto the back wall. 
... The conductor Richard Baker and the 12 musicians of CHROMA light plenty of their own fires with a sinuous, cockeyed ensemble ..."
Geoff Brown, The Times ****

"expert playing from the agile musicians of CHROMA. With three saxophones, accordion, wood saw, hammer and fist, the score has a dusky, unbleached quality, which intermittently breaks out in lament or cry. The bleakness of the subject matter, and the generosity of the performance, forged to make an unforgettable evening."
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer ****

"Using a combination of speech and song, plus a highly idiosyncratic way of setting words projected on a screen as a no-holds-barred battle between two percussionists – members of the brilliant contemporary music ensemble CHROMA, who deliver the score in virtuoso fashion under conductor Richard Baker – Venables follows in the tradition of great composers who discover a way of making a fine text even more eloquent than it already is."
George Hall, The Stage *****

adapted from the play by Sarah Kane by Philip Venables Royal Opera House at the Lyric Hammersmith May 2016

“On a bare, white-walled stage, six well-matched female singers - led by an outstanding Gweneth-Ann Rand - shuffle greyly distressed. Around them, phrases appear and dissolve in projected sound and video while, above, a superb CHROMA ensemble (sensitively conducted by Richard Baker) charts the disintegration of their hive mind. Duelling percussionists parley in a doctor-patient morse code. A tapestry of strings, accordion and saxes evoke polyphonies of yearning while tenderly but inexorably we encounter hopeless recesses of the mind. Knowledge of Kane's suicide shortly after writing the play can only make this humane and understated piece the more compelling.” 
Steph Power, The Independent *****

“The revelation is how Venables has enriched her play through music. He challenges the conventions of opera. Via an array of resources he ambushes and refreshes an old art form… High praise to the 12 members of CHROMA, and the conductor, Venables’ fellow composer Richard Baker” 
Fiona Maddocks, Guardian/Observer 

“Venables’s high-pitched score is a soundscape that imaginatively penetrates and dramatises the heart of this darkness. Ferocious peremptory drum beats mingle ironically with cocktail-hour smooch broadcast from the radio; the vocal writing veers between monotonous chant and shrieking anguish; and there are even moments of melancholy beauty, when the women harmonise laments for a lost life of beauty, friendship, value. All praise to the CHROMA ensemble, conducted by Richard Baker, and the totally committed cast, who must find constant exposure to such negativity extremely draining. Framed by a clinically white box on to the walls of which fragments of the text are projected, Ted Huffman’s finely choreographed staging strikes the right note of unrelieved austerity. This is an urgent message from black-dog hell, and it should not go unheeded.”
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph **** 

“But Venables’ achievement is bigger than that. He manages to enhance Kane’s groundbreaking format with his own unbuttoned imagination. His score lurches between chattering polyphony, sounds of sawing wood, and post-romantic arias, spiced up with eerie violin shrieks. In the exchanges between patient and therapist, two percussionists thrash out rhythmic speech patterns as the text appears on screens beneath them. Then, when the din fades away, we’re left with the indifferent tinkle of elevator music. It’s unhinged and chilling, albeit laced with Kane’s trademark humour. Most of all, it is dizzyingly colourful. Ted Huffman’s production does well to keep things simple, locating the action in a whiter-than white hospital room. The singers are similarly blank canvases; if anything, the CHROMA ensemble instrumentalists, under Richard Baker, play more of a starring role.” 
Hannah Nepil, Financial Times ****

THE COMMISSION - ELSPETH BROOKE/CAFÉ KAFKA - FRANCISCO COLL

premiere Aldeburgh 14 March 2014, touring Royal Opera House Linbury and Opera North Howard Assembly Rooms

"this new initiative from Aldeburgh Music, Opera North and the Royal Opera House to give two works a thorough airing with the crack ensemble CHROMA is welcome indeed." 
Helen Wallace BBC Music Magazine

"the ever-admirable CHROMA ensemble" 
Stephen Pritchard The Observer

"The musicians were members of CHROMA, a London-based flexible chamber ensemble, and their playing was a great strength of the evening under the baton of Richard Baker." 
Keith Clark Musical America

"Richard Baker and the players of CHROMA were excellent throughout, their incisiveness in the latter opera suggestive almost of lengthy acquaintance with a repertory work rather than a second performance."
Boulezian

THROUGH HIS TEETH

Luke Bedford, premiere ROH Linbury 3 April 2014

"Can this be the best British opera in years? Luke Bedford's Through His Teeth at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre is exceptional. Drop everything and go. Bedford has found astonishing maturity and depth. Through His Teeth fires on all cylinders. A, (Anna Devin) a dowdy 30 something looks at fancy cars in a showroom. R (Owen Gilhooly) spots her and chats her up. "I'm not really a car salesman", he says. The tiny orchestra, CHROMA, conducted by Sian Edwards, screams alarm. The small trumpet in C wails like a warning klaxon. The harp's shortest strings are plucked to suggest tight, tense hollowness. An accordion gasps as if its lungs are too constricted to breathe...The clarinet in B flat sings a poisoned melody, like a snake charmer's instrument. The cello is played so its strings reverberate their whole length, like a snake, flexing its muscles sensuously, like a snake falling, willingly, into hypnosis. The percussionist beats brushes, quietly replicating a failing heartbeat. Bedford creates sounds that are so intriguing that the listener is drawn into an invisible trap, almost against one's will. With abstract music, Bedford recreates extreme psychological complexity." 
Anne Ozorio Opera Today

"The performance is first-rate. The instrumental ensemble CHROMA plays with force and precision under Sian Edwards" 
Rupert Christiansen Daily Telegraph

"Bedford's score is surely his most accomplished so far, often turning down the aural volume as the drama grows noisier – to bracing effect. Simple tonal devices and horizontal instrumental lines shatter into spiky microtones. Piano, accordion and harp give a fullness to the chamber ensemble sound. The conductor Sian Edwards and CHROMA contributed to a stylish, provocative, up-to-the-minute show." 
Fiona Maddocks The Observer

FIREWORK-MAKER'S DAUGHTER

David Bruce, premiere Hull Truck 23 March 2013, ROH Linbury, UK Tour

"Bruce's vivid music, skilfully played by CHROMA and conducted by Geoffrey Paterson, mixes the colours of snake-charmer piccolo, gamelan and folk-inspired accordion to delicate effect." 
Fiona Maddocks The Observer

"The ensemble features accordion and double percussion and the nine members of CHROMA play superbly, bringing out the wit and sense of fun as well as the drama of the music." 
Ron Simpson, What's On Stage

"Bruce deserves credit for never musically talking down to his audience. His eclectic, glittering score serves the narrative perfectly, reflecting Pullman’s nonspecific Indo-Oriental locations. It’s very well played, each twist and turn skilfully negotiated by the ensemble CHROMA" 
Graham Rickson, ArtsDesk

HEART OF DARKNESS

music Tarik O'Regan, words Tom Phillips ROH2/Opera East production at ROH Linbury November 2011

"Gooch was superbly served by the instrumentalists of CHROMA, whose accuracy, energy and mastery of various idioms, and sensitivity to the singers and the text, was exemplary...a thrilling new work" 
Opera Today

"this is a terrific new work, intelligently staged and magnificently performed by some fine singers and by the richly committed instrumentalists of CHROMA." 
classicalsource

"CHROMA, under Oliver Gooch, equip themselves admirably, their timbre maintaining a wonderful bite." 
bachtrack

"Underpinning all this is a score of concise originality. Restless, leaping woodwind propel the narrative through the murky waters of the Congo, while interesting combinations of sonorities – double bass and classical guitar, for instance – trickle and bubble through the music. Just 14 instrumentalists keep the singers afloat on this quirkily beautiful raft, expertly steered by conductor Oliver Gooch." 
The Observer

WIND IN THE WILLOWS

ROH Linbury Dec 2012 - Jan 2013

"Out of sight, the CHROMA chamber ensemble play the Martin Ward/George Butterworth score with a brio to match the antics onstage." 
Neil Norman, The Stage

"the group alchemy of perfect collaborators, this delightful show has the stardust of unplanned magic over it. In this case you may actually have to kill to get a ticket, as the run of 30 performances is close to sold out." 
The Arts Desk