Australian Chamber Orchestra: A Clockwork Orange and Beyond

Cult films, synthesisers and an age of innovation, featuring the iconic film scores of Wendy Carlos and more.

Music and image are inextricable in cinema. Blade Runner, Solaris, A Clockwork Orange. You see and hear them. Most of all, you remember the way they made you feel.

We go to the movies to explore the innovations that shaped a generation of trailblazing composers and their unique sound worlds for the screen. Joining the ACO is electronic artist Will Gregory, co-founder and member of internationally revered English electronic music duo Goldfrapp, and an ensemble of Moog Synthesisers.

Pioneers Wendy Carlos and Delia Derbyshire opened the floodgates in the 1960s. Carlos interpreted Bach for the electronic age with Switched-On Bach while Delia Derbyshire gave Australian composer Ron Grainer’s theme for Doctor Who its indelible sci-fi sound.

A Clockwork Orange is as much Carlos’s film as Stanley Kubrick’s. Its blend of original composition with synthesised treatments of classical music was audacious and wildly influential. Taking their cue from the innovations of Carlos and Derbyshire, while looking back to Hollywood’s golden age, sits the music of Vangelis, John Williams and Hans Zimmer – some of the most affecting and iconic in cinema.