Jon Rose

With string orchestras, percussion, a motivating red guard and the severed embalmed arm of the great helmsman himself (maybe), Jon Pits the ethos of Mao's China - and in particular the mass production of the violin and it's use in life against the 'reductive cultural practice of our globalised world'. Well, that's what it says here and by golly I agree. Apart from that, this a large scale work that features fine and extensive writing for string orchestras, juxtaposed with (more or less) controlled Rosean chaos, and harbours serious intentions toward the violin in all its lives and phases. Beautifully packaged in tasteful revolutionary kitsch.