Surge premiered a brand new digital work in October 2020, created with musicians from the Chuanju Opera of Chongqing, China. The new work, entitled Open a Little Door, is an audio and digital piece that brings together musicians from around the globe. Composed by Surge’s Artistic Director Sid Peacock, the work was recorded in Birmingham and Chongqing and marks the triumph of creativity over Covid-19 disaster.

Surge’s Artistic Director Sid Peacock explains: “In 2014 I travelled to China for a week’s residency with the Chongqing Chuanju Opera Troupe, supported by the British Council and PRSF. The experience was incredible and I longed to bring the Chuanju musicians to the UK. The chance finally arose early this year and so we invited Chuanju Opera to Birmingham for a week-long residency to collaborate on a new work, which we hoped to perform live as part of the highly-anticipated Surge in Spring Festival 2020.  The day the flyers arrived in the news was starting to come out of China about Coronavirus - and the rest is history.

 “Not to be deterred, we carried out our collaboration digitally and are now immensely excited to be presenting a digital audio and visual iteration of the project. The piece tries to capture in under 10 minutes what the whole gig might have been like if we had been able to do it. It is an arrangement of a traditional Opera tune that the Chongqing musicians taught me in China, alongside original sections that I began composing whilst in Chongqing in 2014.”