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Artist News
Lamb Of God frontman scores ballet
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 6 March 2015
Lamb Of God frontman Randy Blythe has scored a new ballet in collaboration with choreographer Matthew Frain. It will be premiered at the Richmond Ballet’s New Works Festival in Virginia later this month.
Blythe tells Richmond Magazine that the collaboration came about when Frain, a friend of the metal musician, complained that he was struggling to find musical inspiration for his new piece, at which point Blythe played him some solo music he had been working on while on tour.
“He asked me if he could use some of it”, recalls Blythe. “And I said, ‘Sure, but why don’t we just conceptualize a piece from the ground up, together?'”
He adds: “Working with Matt was very natural – we speak the same ‘creative language’, albeit in two different disciplines. He and I have been close friends for a few years now, which usually (but not always) makes a collaborative effort happen a bit smoother … Both pieces I have composed for the ballet have had Matt involved every step of the way. I don’t think I could work on a piece for dance with any confidence at all if the choreographer wasn’t giving me input from the start”.
They may both speak the same creative language, but Blythe apparently struggled to get to grips with actual ballet terminology.
“We had to come up with a code where we talked with one another”, explains Frain. “I had to tell him, ‘I want this part to feel like you’re floating in a sea of water, or I want it to feel like you’re trying to swim through mud’ … It started to work out in an interesting way. It’s been a cool collaboration”.
Read the full interview with Blythe and Frain here.
