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Hewlett and Albarn make a Monkey

Illustration Jamie Hewlett
Written by
Posted 10:49 GMT on July 24, 2008
Hewlett and Albarn make a Monkey

They have a thing for animals and Gorillaz was a landmark creation, the combination of two heavyweight creatives confidently going about their work. When approached about making Monkey, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett knew they would be taking on a big challenge in every sense.

image of the monkey opera

Monkey - Journey To The West is a Chinese opera using both western and eastern musical influences, scored by Albarn, and set in a creation of Hewlett's imagination based on ancient Chinese legend and inspired in part by the cult TV series.

There's an excellent behind-the-scenes programme on BBC iPlayer until Wed 30th (UK only - sorry) and the opera itself is on at the Royal Opera House tonight, 24th, 25th and 26th July.

Pigsy lives on!

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Creative Commons LicenseHewlett and Albarn make a Monkey (text) by Steph Pomphrey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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