Orchestral manoeuvres for a lark

Bill Bailey is back with his winning combination of music and comedy to unravel the inner workings of the orchestra. He tells BRIAN BOYDhow a mixture of ad soundtracks and the theme songs to 1970s cop shows are helping him to bring classical music into the mainstream

OUTSIDE A cafe in London’s Hammersmith, Bill Bailey sits in the warm morning sunshine and impersonates a theremin. “Thing is about the theremin, the guy who invented it, Professor Theremin, was actually trying to invent an alarm system and he came up with this thing that made a weird noise whenever you approached it,” he says. To illustrate his point, Bailey stands up, moves to and fro and makes weird theremin-style sounds. On paper it doesn’t read that funny, but the particular way he was doing this made the coffee come out of my nose, I was laughing so much.

“He was a strange fella Professor Theremin,” Bailey says. “After he had accidentally invented this most odd of musical instruments back around 1915, he moved to America and with this silly little box that made weird sounds whenever you approached it, he became the toast of American society.

“He even had a muse – this woman who, for some reason or another, had a real affinity for playing it, she could just pluck the notes out of the air. She even did special Theremin-only concerts at Carnegie Hall. Then Professor Theremin decided to go into business and he came up with these Theremin homekits. But they were really crude prototypes and virtually impossible to play, so the instrument was sort of forgotten about until 1950s sci-fi films started to use them again to indicate that the aliens were coming.”

A trained musician before he was a comedian, Bailey is a walking, talking pop-up musical encyclopaedia. His specialist subjects include: Belgian jazz, Prog Rock, the theme songs of 1970s TV detective series and the Alpine horn. He also plays a mean didgeridoo – but that’s a different story.

Bailey unites comedy and music in his new show which is, basically put, an idiot’s guide to the orchestra. “I’m trying to destroy all the reverence there is out there for the orchestra,” he says. “And I’ve always felt there is an undue respect afforded the orchestra ever since my parents brought me to my first classical show when I was eight. As a child I was blown away by the experience and perhaps got my love of music from that first visit, but even at that age I could see that it was all very rigid and had its own hierarchy.”

“The conductor walks out and people start clapping, the leader of the orchestra is introduced and all the other musicians tap their bows or whatever in appreciation. I really felt that these people were being treated like Gods who had special powers. And there were all these endless standing ovations.

“I remember all the people staring at me because I would be clapping in all the wrong places – at the end of a movement or something – and that really annoyed me. It was like there was some sort of class system in place and I was showing my ignorance with my bad etiquette.”

In the show, Bailey gently coaxes people in to the mystery of the orchestra by playing well known classical pieces from TV shows, films and ads. He breaks these sections down and shows what instrument plays what bit and what sort of musical effect that has.

"It's a guide, but it's a very irreverent guide – I explain what each instrument does and what each section contributes – but the music is recognisable to most people," he says. "You can use certain tricks to explain certain points. I take the theme music to the PanoramaTV show, which everyone knows, and then get the orchestra to play it backwards to illustrate how it has been arranged.

“And it does get quite specific in places – to tell people about the bass clarinet I explain that they already know what it sounds like because it was always used in 1970s TV cops shows whenever the bad guy was entering a building. And then I explain the sound of the muted trombone by showing how it was used when the bad guy left a building in these same shows. It’s fun – but it is educational as well.”

Best described as a comedy that uses musical instruments to provide the punchlines, there are some very skilful touches here that could only come from someone as steeped in musical knowledge as Bailey.

He shows how the harp – which he calls "God's washboard" because of the beautiful celestial music it makes – actually has more than a touch of menace about it; why the flute makes an hallucinogenic sound; and in one inspired flight of fancy he makes a concrete connection between the oboe, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Emmerdale Farm.

“Really the question I’m asking is why does a person sawing away on a piece of wood provoke such an emotional response? Why do we feel the way we do about music? I’m always stopping the orchestra and explaining – I think of it as me opening a car bonnet, pointing to something and saying ‘that’s what this bit does’. I show how if you take out a certain instrument from a certain passage it totally changes the effect of the piece. But you sprinkle those moments with some fun bits – I show why all bassoon players are obsessed with The Bee Gees – but you can’t explain that in print, you have to hear it being played,” he says.

He worked closely with the composer and conductor Anne Dudley (who used to be in The Art of Noise – the 1980s arty synth-pop band) to score the show in a certain way. “This is not like a comedy show, this has to be very planned and rehearsed,” he says. “For me, it comes down to writing a joke out for 76 different musicians and getting them to all come in at different times. But working with Anne made it very, very easy. I could just say to her: ‘Can you write some music so it sounds like someone is running through a forest, then can you have them emerging on a mountain top’ and she would come back with exactly the type of music that signifies these actions.”

Earlier this year he performed the show (with the BBC Concert Orchestra) at the Royal Albert Hall, but for his two Irish shows he’s using the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. “They’re all great musicians – it will just mean a day of rehearsals with them beforehand,” he says.

While he does get his regular fans at the shows, he is surprised by how broad the audience has become, thanks to the added dimension of classical musical. “I’ve still got the goths coming along, but now I’ve got the grannies as well. So any Irish granny goths out there will really enjoy it.”

Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra, conducted by Anne Dudley and featuring the RTÉ Concert Orchestra is at Dublin’s O2 on November 21st and the Odyssey Arena, Belfast on November 22nd