Overture to Performance
Writers - Tennant/Lowe/Willis (arr. Niles)
First released - 1991
Original album - (none)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Richard Niles
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
Chris and Neil asked their friend Richard Niles to arrange and conduct a fully orchestrated pastiche of various songs of theirs for use as the opening music to their remarkable 1991 stage show, Performance. This he did, and the resulting overture appears as a bonus track on certain versions of the "DJ Culture" and "Was It Worth It?" singles. The songs whose melodies make up this overture are "It's a Sin," "Being Boring," "Opportunities," "So Hard," "Jealousy," "Suburbia," "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?," "What Have I Done to Deserve This?," and, of course, "West End Girls."
Although a recording of this piece was indeed employed repeatedly on the Performance Tour, it never had any actual live public performance until July 23, 2014, at the BBC Proms show at London's Royal Albert Hall—the same concert at which the completed Tennant-Lowe composition A Man from the Future received its world premiere.
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