Netia Jones is a director/designer and video artist in opera and staged concerts, using projection and mixed media in all of her work. She is director of Lightmap, the mixed media creative studio working internationally in video, film, performance and installation, and was founder and director of Transition, the critically acclaimed multimedia performance group. She read Modern Languages and Literature at Oxford University and has translated both spoken and sung texts for performance.
Nominated for RPS Award 2011
Nominated for South Bank Award 2013
Nominated for RPS Award 2013
2018
Dark Mirror
Zender/Schubert
Shanghai Grand Theater
Die Zauberflöte
Mozart Garsington Opera
* * * *
“A Flute for our times” Times
* * * *
“every detail is precisely observed…it’s disturbing and truthful” Observer
* * * *
“Visually enchanting and intellectually thought-provoking.” Opera Today
* * * *
“A searching Flute…signalling the end of more than one old order” Bachtrack
IRMA
Tom Phillips South London Gallery
2017
Dark Mirror
Zender/Schubert Lincoln Center, New York
“An unusually daring way to cherish the possibilities of Schubert’s music, so daring that it is much better thought of as a work of our own time than of his” New Yorker
“A funky rethinking of Schubert’s winter journey” New York Times
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Britten Aldeburgh Festival
* * * *
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream took us into an enchanted Suffolk wood and, with artless simplicity, cast spells ” Guardian
* * * * *
“nigh-on flawless.” Stage
* * * *
“Netia Jones has found a visual language in tune with Britten’s music” Times
Messiah
Handel Bergen National Opera, Bergen International Festival
* * * * * “a magical and beautiful performance of Messiah” Tidende
From An Abandoned Work
Beckett International Beckett Festival, Enniskillen, Ireland
2016
Dark Mirror
Zender/Schubert Barbican Theatre, National Theatre of Taichung, Taiwan,
* * * * *
‘elegant, inventive, a haunting take on alienation’ Financial Times
* * * *
‘meticulous and fearless staging ….. it could not be done better’ Observer
* * * *
‘An enthralling tribute to Schubert’s genius.’ Telegraph
* * * *
‘Less a remix of Schubert’s song-cycle than a fascinating conversation with it’ TheArtsDesk
* * * *
‘If you are seeking an interpretation which reveals the beauty and the timeless, philosophical qualities of Schubert’s music and Müller’s poetry, I would urge you to see this.’ Bachtrack
Erwartung
Bergen International Festival/Bergen National Opera
Schönberg
* * * * *
“Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Bergen National Opera deliver a strong and overwhelming performance at the Bergen International Festival”
Bergens Tildene
2015
Atthis
Royal Opera House
Georg Friedrich Haas Linbury Theatre
* * * * *
‘An extraordinary fusion of sound and vision…We have seen the soprano Claire Booth directed by that lighting-magician Netia Jones before but never has their creative chemistry worked so effectively.’
Independent
* * * *
A gorgeous play of music and emotion based on the erotic love poetry of Sappho… Painting with the endlessly flexible canvas of video – used here as an extension of the shadow-play of her lighting – Jones is a natural visual counterpart to Haas, whose microtonal music occupies the same range of shifting, incremental textures.
The Arts Desk
Alice In Wonderland
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Unsuk Chin Barbican, London
* * * *
“With the ever-fertile musical imagination of Unsuk Chin, and with Netia Jones’s characteristically brilliant meld of projected graphics and live action; with pen-and-ink-blot drawings by veteran cartoonist Ralph Steadman, and with a libretto-on-speed by the prolific David Henry Hwang, this opera on Lewis Carroll’s evergreen fable was a show of all the talents”
Independent
* * * *
“Chin’s music is paired with the meticulous creativity of British director-designer Netia Jones to create a multimedia spectacle that transforms the sombre interior of the Barbican Hall into a riot of colour and sensation. Jones takes Ralph Steadman’s acid 1970s pen and ink illustrations of Alice as her touchstone, bringing many to life as animations, and taking others as inspiration for costumes and characters. Colours are primary, designs are remixed, trippy versions of traditional styles, exaggerated and distorted for comic effect…its creative ingenuity and invention, visual and musical, make the journey a vivid and an entertaining one.”
The Arts Desk
* * * *
“Netia Jones’s fresh, deftly witty semi-staging, based on Ralph Steadman’s explosive drawings, served the story to perfection: via a screen Alice can fall down a rabbit hole, grow a mile high, encounter a smoking caterpillar with gyroscope eyes and find herself in a game of flamingo croquet on a lawn made of boys’ green hair.”
Classical Music
* * * *
“Jones’ inspired video projections draw on Ralph Steadman’s celebrated illustrations and her costumes and set designs demonstrate no less invention.”
Evening Standard
“The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s run of “Alice” last weekend, directed and designed by the British theater artist Netia Jones, did not stint on the opera’s surreal trappings but stayed true to that fundamental sobriety… It was dominated by projections on an askew screen, making ample use of Ralph Steadman’s trippy, grotesque black-and-white “Alice” illustrations from the 1970s…pleasurably disconcerting”.
New York Times
“Jones’ inspiration was to base her production on illustrations by Ralph Steadman, whose work appears in Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Jones captivatingly turned these into animation, done in real time during the performance. She also extended Steadman’s influence into her costumes, but she followed her own fancy as well. Alice was a little girl. The Queen of Hearts had a hilariously over-styled 18th century look. With 100 costumes, the production had just about everything else in between, including the Mad Hatter as a businessman in bondage. She occasionally projected the live performers into the video illustrations…If all this exuberance sounds exhilarating, it was on Friday.”
LA Times
Les Illuminations
Swedish Radio Symphony
Britten Stockholm
2014
Soundings
Los Angeles Philharmonic
John Williams
“One particular highlight was an approximately nine-minute video, which ran during the Star Wars compositions, showing original sketches and blueprints for the film, many of them brought to life with animation by British artist and director Netia Jones.”
Hollywood Reporter
“To accompany “Star Wars,” which Dudamel conducted with the magnificence of a space-age Pomp and Circumstance march, Jones animated original storyboard sketches. Music that has become cliché felt renewed, as if Williams’ score were what prodded the creative process.”
Los Angeles Times
Curlew River
White Light Festival, Lincoln Center
Britten Calperformances, Carolina Performing Arts
“This Curlew River is wonderful for the performances, of course, but fundamentally it is memorable and powerful due to Jones’ sympathy to the score and the concept. Along with directing, she designed the set, costumes and video. She sees inside the pure core of the piece, and has brought out something marvellous.”
New York Classical Review
“Netia Jones’s absorbing staging and design skillfully melded the ritual Japanese and Christian underpinnings of the piece with its intense human emotion.”
Wall Street Journal
“In her production, Ms. Jones dispenses with masks and includes atmospheric, simple video images, which she designed, along with the costumes. The story is enacted on a platform. On one side, we see the sails and benches of the boat. There is a trace of smoke in the air, suggesting river mists but also chapel incense…As performed by Mr. Bostridge in this grimly powerful production, the woman’s peace of mind comes because finally she knows what has happened to him.”
New York Times
“Jones performed her own miracles, designing the scenery, costumes and projections as well as the overall direction of the piece…In short, it was a performance quite unlike any other in recent memory.”
Broadway World
“Curlew River invokes both Japanese Noh drama and medieval Christian religious rites. But director/designer Netia Jones’s brilliant staging showed that it is, above all, an opera…it crackled with theatrical life. Jones’s production conveyed both the work’s asceticism and its richness. The design and lighting scheme was entirely monochromatic, and the setting could not have been more stark: a single gray platform extending down the length of the sanctuary; a row of pebbles at its side to provide a path for the monks who are the ritual’s celebrants; a white sail at one end to evoke the ferry that’s the work’s main setting and central metaphor. But Jones’s Japanese-art-influenced video projections, serving as both scenery and commentary, brought their own kind of restrained beauty.”
Opera News, Metropolitan Opera Guild
Verklärte Nacht
Musikkollegium Winterthur
Schönberg Switzerland
Words and Music Happy Days International Beckett Festival
Samuel Beckett/Morton Feldman
That sense of something beyond what we see and hear, not enlarged on, is at the core of Beckett’s writing. Every presence seems shadowed by an absence. This is acutely conveyed in Netia Jones’s stage world premiere of his 1961 radio play Words and Music, in which Words (Adrian Dunbar) and Music (the Crash Ensemble) compete to communicate. Croak (Ian McElhinney) attempts to mediate: “My comforts! Be friends!” On a wide stage stands a white box/room; the wall towards the auditorium is missing. With his back to this non-wall sits a figure at a table; in his hand, a stick. Darkness surrounds the box: to one side sits another figure; on the other side musicians. Voices and instruments pattern – antagonistically, tentatively, melodically, with pizzicato fizz, developing fragile, shifting interdependencies within solitude.
Guardian
Happy Days * * * * *
2013
Benjamin Britten
Curlew River
Barbican
* * * * *
‘faultless’
Telegraph
* * * * *
‘Netia Jones stages it in the nave of St Giles’, the audience seated on both sides, craning to see around the pillars, the air heavy with incense. The monks who enact the story process with their feet crunching along a strip of shingle; monochrome video images – rippling water, the ferry’s painter, skirling birds – are projected on to the white floor and a white sail at the back. Jones, as ever, uses the video to support, not supplant the live action, and the result is succinct, impactful and ultimately cathartic… an involving, direct, unforgettable performance.’
Guardian
* * * * *
‘ The frontier that must be crossed, from despair to hope, from ignorance to enlightenment, from life to death, is a powerful constant in all our lives…Netia Jones’s outstanding new production for the Barbican Britten season places that frontier, the river, right down the length of the nave of St Giles Cripplegate, in one of the many striking video projections that have become her imaginative trademark… A revival of this production cannot come too soon.’
Observer
* * * * *
‘ Imaginatively conceived, sleek, modern, and very well sung… For 75 minutes time moves at its own pace. As a centenary offering, this was worth waiting for.’
Financial Times
A Living Thing
Los Angeles Philharmonic
A concert event created to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, with multiple projections, video installations and live film, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel and featuring Yo Yo Ma.
‘a magical, ringing salute’
LA Times
Castiglioni
Inverno In-Ver New World Symphony, Miami and Chicago
In collaboration with Michael Tilson Thomas
‘ a striking video installation devised by Tilson Thomas and British director and video artist Netia Jones…the video exegesis, which the artist cued to the musical performance from her laptop computer, seemed both a natural outgrowth of and complement to Castiglioni’s icy vignettes. Three clusters of various-sized video screens were hung above and at the sides of the stage to display fluid, closeup images of snowflakes, snowscapes and, at one point, the silhouette of a human figure tumbling from screen to screen, accompanied by piercing blasts of woodwinds…It was all extremely effective: The visual and aural elements enhanced rather than detracted from each other.’
Chicago Tribune
Kafka Fragments
Royal Opera House,
György Kurtág Linbury Theatre
* * * * *
‘Not really opera, scarcely music-theatre, yet more than a song cycle: the video artist and director Netia Jones’s staging of György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments is a small miracle of perfection, and I hope that eventually it will travel farther than the space at the Royal Opera House where it was engendered…The black-and-white video projections are as exquisitely crafted as the words and music… There is no journey, no goal, no resolution here. But we, the bystanders, are irresistibly drawn into these “dances of time”; and their restlessness, their dreams and their darkness become one with ours.’
The Times
* * * *
‘…when your director is a video artist as resourceful and inventive as Netia Jones, and when your soprano has the charisma and versatility of Claire Booth, you get a very heady brew. Jones believes that although this work has no ‘story’ it does have a structure, and she has realised this with compelling force…That space may be ’empty’, but it’s filled with the most intense drama as Jones’s light-show interacts with voice, body, and violin.’
Independent
* * * *
‘The staging homes in powerfully on the work’s sense of alienation, portraying the woman cut off from the world, nervously alone with her thoughts and feelings.’
Financial Times
* * * *
‘Aware that the work itself has no narrative, Jones refuses to stage it as a monologue, and separates the songs, some of which last no more than a few seconds, with blackouts… Constraint and existential defiance are in continuous opposition…this is a fine achievement, mesmerising and unnerving in equal measure.’
Guardian
Marco Polo
Bergen National Opera
Tan Dun Bergen Festival
* * * *
“her approach sees the principals delivering in front of a video backdrop (controlled live by Jones tapping on her two Macs halfway up the stalls). Atmospheric film conjures Venetian piazzas, the Himalayas and finally China’s Great Wall on Marco’s journey. Costumes are sumptuous, Kubla Khan’s beard fusing with a magnificent fur coat.
Times
A visually seductive performance…This stunning-looking new production benefits hugely from the input of the British director/designer and video artist Netia Jones.
Telegraph
The Rise of New York Minimalism
London Sinfonietta
Riley, Reich, Glass Purcell Room
Landmarks Series
Webern and The Second Viennese School
London Sinfonietta
Webern, Schoenberg, Berg Purcell Room
Landmarks Series
2012
Les Illuminations
Britten Scottish Ensemble
* * * *
‘The evening’s big innovation, though, was a performance of Les illuminations, Britten’s settings of poetry by Rimbaud, with specially commissioned visuals by video artist Netia Jones. There was something about the combination of Jones’s glistening imagery, Britten’s vivid music and Rimbaud’s strange, proto-surrealist poetry that really worked. There was a practical purpose to the visuals – Jones used them to supply English translations of the Rimbaud texts – but her ghostly figures and sinister fairground carousels seemed entirely in-keeping with the song cycle’s decadent beauty. The intense, sharply-defined playing from the Scottish Ensemble musicians only added to the spine tingling vision of the work.’
Quartet For The End Of Time London Sinfonietta
Messiaen Purcell Room
Landmarks Series
Where The Wild Things Are/
Higglety Pigglety Pop!
Oliver Knussen Aldeburgh Festival, Barbican, Los Angeles Philharmonic
Tangelwood Contemporary Music Festival
* * * * *
‘Enter the virtuoso director/designer Netia Jones with a wonderfully elegant solution: live casts who interact with back-projections of Sendak’s drawings which Jones animates in real time.’ Independent
* * * *
‘Netia Jones’s production of Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop! is as much a triumph of animated film, video projection and split-second co-ordination as of conventional theatre. Knussen based both one-act operas on Maurice Sendak’s illustrated children’s stories and Jones goes one step farther, turning Sendak’s memorable images into cartoons played on a screen behind the performers…She has pioneered real-time animation, sitting at a computer desk and aligning her images, note by note, with the live performers.’
Times
‘a stupendous staging of his Sendak-inspired operatic double bill…It would be easy to devote all the available space to praising Netia Jones’ ingenious direction and video designs, in association with Lightmap.’ Observer
* * * *
‘Jones has understood this perfectly…she has utterly faithful to his visual world, while animating it in a perfectly judged, gently witty way.’ Guardian
* * * *
‘This is where the director, Netia Jones, has delivered her masterstroke. Taking the original illustrations, she has turned them into animated projections – easy perhaps to imagine, but not to bring off as triumphantly as she has.’ Financial Times
‘Jones’s freewheeling imagination is in tune with the music itself.’ Telegraph
Before Life and After
Aldeburgh Festival
Britten/Finzi/Tippett
* * * *
‘ The half-remembered thing evoked in Netia Jones’s video and stage imagery was the branch railway line that ran between Leiston and Aldeburgh for over a century, until Beeching’s axe fell on it in 1966… everything was done with such delicate tact. The best moments came when the performers found a real emotional heat — as in Before Life and Death itself, when a sense of real desperation pushed through the beautifully evocative surface. Telegraph
2011
O Let Me Weep
Opera North, Light Night
Purcell
The Seafarer
Festival of Britain, South Bank
Messiaen
Everlasting Light
Aldeburgh Festival
Ligeti, Gesulado, Scelsi, Marenzio,
Mazulis, Vicentino, Weelkes
‘What had possessed what? Was this an arts event totally infused with the spirit of a place, or a place transfigured by the power of art?…Such all-encompassing artworks make what normally goes on in concert halls, theatres and galleries look tame and prehistoric’ Times
* * * *
‘ conceived by the designer and film-maker Netia Jones, it was a conjunction of film and performance artfully placed in a landscape…The strange haunted atmosphere of that far-off age came together in the most magical way’ Telegraph
Musica Ricercata/Études
Transition, King’s Place
Ligeti
* * * *
‘almost the whole of music history, from the Elizabethans to the present day, is grist to the mill of Transition, the multimedia performance group directed by video artist Netia Jones…so many different musical cultures are brought together in Ligeti’s extraordinary pieces, they seem tailor made for Jones’s presentations’ Guardian
Verklärte Nacht
Manchester Camerata
2010
Oh My Days!
Transition, King’s Place Jacopo Peri
* * * *
‘ the overarching theme of adolescent angst is thrillingly apt’ Telegraph
La Voix Humaine
Transition, King’s Place Poulenc
* * * *
‘riveting theatre’ Evening Standard
* * * *
‘ innovative, first-rate concerts…Netia Jones’ video subtly enhanced the content’ Guardian
Before Life and After
Transition, King’s Place Britten/Finzi/Tippett
‘not to be missed’ Evening Standard
The Way To the Sea
Aldeburgh Festival Britten
* * * *
‘ can be summed up in three words; brilliant, brilliant and brilliant’ Guardian
* * * *
‘a touching evocation of a bygone era’s innocence, and it’s unruly yearnings’ Telegraph
2009
Sequenzas
Transition, King’s Place Berio
Leçons de Ténèbres
Transition, King’s Place Couperin
Pierrot Lunaire
Transition, King’s Place Schoenberg
Recollections of My Childhood
Transition, King’s Place Stravinsky
Correa nel Seno Amato
Transition, King’s Place Scarlatti
Mikrokosmos
Transition, King’s Place Bartók
In Darkness Let Me Dwell
Transition, King’s Place Dowland
‘bringing integrity and intelligence to the task of bringing video into classical music’ Times
* * * *
‘ the intelligence and beauty of Netia Jones’ video…dazzling’ Guardian
* * * *
‘ ravishing’ Music OMH
* * * *
‘ dazzling’ Independent
‘…the profound musicality of Jones herself…She strikes me as the video equivalent of dancer and choreographer Mark Morris, a passionate communicator whose grasp of the inner workings of music can lead to layers of resonance rather than bland depiction. The interaction between live and minutely pre-prepared film was seamlessly designed…’ BBC Music Magazine
Recollections of My Childhood
Transition, Wilton’s Music Hall
Stravinsky
‘wonderfully atmospheric…video images of the children interacting with the various animals and birds of the stories…an elegant, and indeed state-of-the-art, frame for Stravinsky’s miniature mythical worlds.’ Music Web International
* * * *
‘ a total delight’ Telegraph
La Voix Humaine
Opera North Projects
Poulenc
Venus and Adonis
Transition, Wilton’s Music Hall
John Blow
* * * *
‘ lively…startling…beautifully sung, and with moments of haunting poignancy…’ Times
* * * *
‘ sharply conceived technology…remarkable depth and invention…joyous…and delightful…’ MusicOMH
* * * *
‘ wonderful…disquietingly effective’ Guardian
Apollo & Dafne
Transition, Lincoln’s Inn
‘Transition, well known for their innovative and thoroughly modern approach… original, contemporary and captivating throughout… a wonderfully entertaining and original experience’ Musicalcriticism.com
2008
Mikrokosmos
Transition, Wilton’s Music Hall Bartók
‘The most complete act of imagination…music made visible, now indelibly stamped on my memory’ BBC Music Magazine
Acis and Galatea
Transition, Wilton’s Music Hall Handel
‘Pick of The Year’ Independent 2008
* * * * *
‘ simply breathtaking’ Independent
* * * *
‘ bold and lively, contemporary and profoundly moving…ingeniously enhanced by video projections’ Guardian
In Darkness Let Me Dwell
Transition, Wilton’s Music Hall
‘Innovation is all for audience capturing, and Wilton’s Music Hall was gratifyingly packed’ Musicwebinternational
2007
Pierrot Lunaire
Transition, Wilton’s Music Hall Schoenberg
Guardian ‘Pick Of 2007’
‘Netia Jones’ video is witty and perceptive’ Guardian (Dec)
* * * *
energetic…bold…experimental and witty’ Guardian (Oct)
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno
Transition, Wilton’s Music Hall
* * * *
‘ startlingly original…bright, imaginative…fresh and fascinating’ Observer
‘this striking production crackled with cheeky irreverence’ Times
* * * *
‘ a happy synergy of ear-opening singing and innovative video art. Go and see it.’ Stage
2007
Pierrot Lunaire
Transition, Wilton’s Music Hall Schoenberg
Guardian ‘Pick Of 2007’
‘Netia Jones’ video is witty and perceptive’ Guardian (Dec)
* * * *
energetic…bold…experimental and witty’ Guardian (Oct)
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno
Transition, Wilton’s Music Hall
* * * *
‘ startlingly original…bright, imaginative…fresh and fascinating’ Observer
‘this striking production crackled with cheeky irreverence’ Times
* * * *
‘ a happy synergy of ear-opening singing and innovative video art. Go and see it.’ Stage
2002 - 2007
Early Opera Company
Alfred
Royal Opera House, Linbury Theatre Arne
Partenope
Royal Opera House, Linbury Theatre Handel
Ariodante
Iford ArtsHandel
Alcina
Iford Arts Handel
Orlando
Iford Arts
Handel
Flavio
Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank & tour Handel
Susanna
Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank & tour Handel
‘ In Netia Jones characteristically bold staging baroque music theatre met MTV, stylised images were projected onto a screen behind the characters, dancers presented a fluid cross between kick-boxing and break dancing’ Guardian
‘Netia Jones’ production is funny, neat and understated…could grace any festival in the world’ Times
‘Director/designer Netia Jones had contrived a pleasingly clean-lined, half-built white palace of a set, with an intriguing projection screen incorporated… a good time was had by all’ Independent
2001
Cross Currents (site specific)
Broomhill Opera at Tilbury Docks Errollyn Wallen
Fanferlizzy Sunnyfeet (UK Première)
Broomhill Opera Kurt Schwertsik
* * * *
‘ a deeply stylish production by Netia Jones, and another triumph’ Telegraph
* * * *
‘ entirely original in content… an absolute treat…director Netia Jones’s trippy, childlike staging is absolutely irresistible…’ Independent
* * * *
‘ The pace, humour and energy carry everything along on waves of dream-like logic: bizarre, touching, hilarious, mad’ Metro
2000
Aci, Galatea, Polifemo
Batignano Opera Festival, Italy Handel
Barber of Seville
British Youth Opera, Peacock Theatre Rossini
* * * *
‘ Brilliantly directed, treading the line between innovation and gimmickry with virtuoso zeal’ Guardian
* * * * *
‘ Funny, stylish and well-sung…one of the best stagings of that opera in years, due to Netia Jones inspired direction’ Express
Mazeppa
University College Opera, Bloomsbury Theatre Tchaikovsky
* * * *
‘ The punchiest show I’ve ever seen here; aggressive, stark, emphatic and strong’
Independent on Sunday
* * * *
‘ The most exciting of these productions within living memory’ Times
Hansel and Gretel
Covent Garden Festival, Arts Theatre Humperdinck
‘This performance was a winner…the spot-on production was directed and designed by Netia Jones…a remarkable achievement…it’s exhilarating and economic’ Opera
* * * *
‘ triumphant…Netia Jones has devised stage action that is brilliantly true to childhood life…as fresh and imaginative as it is disturbing. The director/designer Netia Jones is to be congratulated on turning the opera into a psychodrama…’ Express