Earlier this year Chris and Neil wrote one minute of orchestral music for the BBC Concert Orchestra which was performed in concert as part of “a new piece by 12 composers who have had an association with the BBC Concert Orchestra, where each composer writes one minute of music. The order of composers is determined by the roll of a dice and each composer sees the last 12 bars of the previous composer’s section and then continues the piece at their will.” The BBC entitled the full 12-minute piece “Stakes and Chips”. You can hear the full concert broadcast tonight on BBC Radio 3 at 7 pm.
UPDATE: The concert can be heard at the link below for the next five days. Pet Shop Boys’ minute is between 12:51 and 13:53.
The first preview of the Jonathan Harvey/Pet Shop Boys musical, “Closer to Heaven” was performed on this day in 2001 at the Arts Theatre in London, with the official press night following on May 31st. The original cast album was released several months later and is still available on streaming services.
Neil and Chris had originally started writing the musical together with Jonathan Harvey in 1996. “We wanted to write something that wasn’t Les Mis or Rent,” says Chris. “A play about contemporary life with contemporary music that was not long and boring.”
Since its first run of shows in 2001, “Closer to Heaven” has returned to London theatre stages several times, most recently at the Turbine Theatre in 2024. It also premiered in Brisbane, Australia in 2005, in Brighton, UK in 2009 and in Dallas, USA in 2010. And one of its main characters, Billie Trix, returned in 2019 with her own one-woman show, “Musik”, also written by Jonathan Harvey with some new Tennant/Lowe songs.
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