The orchestra begins a year of celebrations marking its tenth anniversary with a performance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which also hosted its 2015 debut.

Chineke! Orchestra

Matthew Kofi Waldren conductor

RENU (Renu Hossain) tabla

Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno nyatiti

Richard Olátundé Baker talking drums

Roderick Williams baritone

Yomi Sode narrator

Shirley J Thompson: Fanfare for Chineke! (World premiere)

Julian Joseph: Carry that sound

Roderick Williams: 3 Songs from Ethiopia Boy

Interval

Song of the Prophets: A Requiem for the Climate

Ayanna Witter-Johnson: Creation (1st movement)

Daniel Kidane: Ruin (2nd movement)

Shirley J Thompson: Recovery (3rd movement)

Roderick Williams: Redemption (4th movement)

James B Wilson: Free-man; Remnants (on texts by Yomi Sode)

Conductor: Jakub Hrůša (incoming new Director of Music for the Royal Opera)

Repertoire:

‘The Jealousy’ Overture by Leoš Janáček (originally written for Jenůfa but later discarded)

Arias from Jenůfa by Leoš Janáček

Act 1 - duet (Jenůfa/Števa)

Act 2 - Jenůfa’s prayer

Act 3 - last scene (Jenůfa/Laca)

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO.9

London Euphonia Orchestra with the Purcell Singers and soloists selected for us by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Dario Peluso, Conductor
Mariana Fernandes, Soprano
Julia Solomon, Mezzo-Soprano
Harry Jacques, Tenor
Twm Tegid Brunton, Baritone
Benjamin Kirk, Chorus Master

Performers:

Chineke! Orchestra

Chineke! Junior Orchestra

Handsworth St Mary’s Church choristers

Avishka Edirisinghe conductor

Programme:

Carol - Once in Royal David’s City

Carol - Mary Had a Baby

Spiritual - Steal Away 

Hymn - Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow

Carol - Go Tell it on the Mountain

Carol - Ding Dong Merrily on High

Mathias - Sir Christémas 

Bologne - L’Amant Anonyme Overture

Sacred Song - Pie Jesu

Sacred Song - O Holy Night

Carol - Calypso Carol

Nigerian folksong - Ibike

Nunes Garcia - Kyrie and Gloria from Missa Pastoril Para a Noite de Natal

Vivaldi - Gloria

Closing Carol - We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Yi-Chuan Chen conductor
Sam Scheer conductor
Giuseppe Stillitano conductor

Elgar Serenade for Strings in E minor, op 20
Stravinsky Concerto in D, 'Basle'
Rota Concerto for Strings

Conductors' Podium concert curated by RCM students.

Concert programme

Handel - Arrival of the Queen of Sheba

Carol - Once in Royal David’s City

Carol - Mary Had a Baby

Spiritual - Steal Away

Hymn - Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow

Carol - Go Tell it on the Mountain

Carol - Ding Dong Merrily on High

Matthias - Sir Christémas

Bologne - L’Amant Anonyme Overture

Sacred Song - Pie Jesu

Sacred Song - O Holy Night

Carol - Calypso Carol

Nigerian folksong - Ibike

Nunes Garcia - Kyrie and Gloria from Missa Pastoril Para a Noite de Natal

Vivaldi - Gloria

Closing Carol - We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Sidiki Dembélé directs the Sinfonia Cymru chamber orchestra with his fellow West African musicians – Modou Ndiaye on kora and Mariatou Dembélé on vocals – to bring you an Ankaben, a coming together of cultures. This powerful 80-minute programme includes a fusion of West African Mandingue, Western Classical and Celtic music, joyful rhythms and storytelling. Join us for a once in a lifetime orchestral concert.

Sidiki Dembélé and Sinfonia Cymru: Ankaben

Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Sidiki Dembélé directs the Sinfonia Cymru chamber orchestra with his fellow West African musicians – Modou Ndiaye on kora and Mariatou Dembélé on vocals – to bring you an Ankaben, a coming together of cultures. This powerful 90-minute programme includes a fusion of West African Mandingue, Western Classical and Celtic music, joyful rhythms and storytelling. Join us for a once in a lifetime orchestral concert.

Sidiki Dembélé Tama (The Journey)

Sidiki Dembélé Ita (For You)

Sidiki Dembélé Toubakan

Sidiki Dembélé Shaka

Sidiki Dembélé Miniyamba

Sidiki Dembélé Djikunu (Power of Water)

Donald Grant The Witch of Leanachan

Alex Groves Yeah Yeeaahh Yeeeaaahhh

George Friederic Handel Suite in G Major from Water Music

Jean-Féry Le cahos (Chaos), from Les Élémens

Patrick Rimes Jost ar C'hoat

Patrick Rimes Galliard - Bourrée

Caroline Shaw Valencia

Sidiki Dembélé and Sinfonia Cymru: Ankaben

Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Sidiki Dembélé directs the Sinfonia Cymru chamber orchestra with his fellow West African musicians – Modou Ndiaye on kora and Mariatou Dembélé on vocals – to bring you an Ankaben, a coming together of cultures. This powerful 90-minute programme includes a fusion of West African Mandingue, Western Classical and Celtic music, joyful rhythms and storytelling. Join us for a once in a lifetime orchestral concert.

Sidiki Dembélé Tama (The Journey)

Sidiki Dembélé Ita (For You)

Sidiki Dembélé Toubakan

Sidiki Dembélé Shaka

Sidiki Dembélé Miniyamba

Sidiki Dembélé Djikunu (Power of Water)

Donald Grant The Witch of Leanachan

Alex Groves Yeah Yeeaahh Yeeeaaahhh

George Friederic Handel Suite in G Major from Water Music

Jean-Féry Le cahos (Chaos), from Les Élémens

Patrick Rimes Jost ar C'hoat

Patrick Rimes Galliard - Bourrée

Caroline Shaw Valencia

Awe-inspiring orchestral suite will be performed by a full orchestra of over 80 local musicians, bringing to life the grandeur and mystique of Holst’s cosmic masterpiece.

As a special addition to the programme for the evening, the orchestra will also perform The Needles to celebrate the 60th birthday of composer Matthew Taylor, who has been at the heart of the Music Appreciation course at Blackheath Halls for over two decades.

Programme:
Holst The Planets
Matthew Taylor The Needles

Chris Stark conductor
Blackheath Halls Orchestra

Performers:

Kevin John Edusei Johnson conductor

Isata Kanneh-Mason piano

Programme:

Derrick Skye: Prisms, Cycles, Leaps

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No.3

Interval

Brian Raphael Nabors: Concerto for Orchestra

Chineke!

Kevin John Edusei Conductor

Isata Kanneh-Mason Piano

Programme

Derrick Spiva Jr.

Prisms Cycles Leaps

Sergey Prokofiev

Piano Concerto no. 3, op. 26

Brian Raphael Nabors

Concerto for Orchestra (world premiere)

Performers

Kevin John Edusei Johnson conductor

Isata Kanneh-Mason piano

Programme:

Derrick Skye: Prisms, Cycles, Leaps

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No.3

Brian Raphael Nabors: Concerto for Orchestra

CHINEKE! ORCHESTRA / ISATA KANNEH-MASON / KEVIN JOHN EDUSEI

Ruth Gipps Song for Orchestra

Hailstork Symphony no 1

Sibelius Symphony no 2

‘‘The Chineke! Orchestra honours women composers whose powerful music resonates through the ages, ending with a UK premiere of a rediscovered Florence Price work.

The Chineke! Orchestra and conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson guide us through Eleanor Alberga’s extraordinary, cosmic Jupiter’s Fairground, then to bask in the pastoral beauty of Avril Coleridge-Taylor's Sussex Landscape.

The centrepiece is Valerie Coleman's Concerto for Wind Quintet and Orchestra, Phenomenal Women. The piece is a profound tribute to women who have stepped into treacherous spaces, inspired the world, and moved the course of history; shining a bright light and opening doors, especially for women of colour.

Following the interval, the Chineke! Orchestra breaks new ground with the UK premiere of Florence Price's fourth and final symphony; she never heard it performed during her lifetime.

The work was thought to be lost but was rediscovered in 2009 among a stash of manuscripts in Price’s former summer home. The piece weaves a rich narrative of cultural depth and emotional nuance, celebrating her historic contribution to American music.

It is a privilege for the Chineke! Orchestra to give the floor to these incredible women.

Programme:

Eleanor Alberga: Overture, Jupiter's fairground

A Coleridge-Taylor: Sussex Landscape, Op.27

Valerie Coleman: Phenomenal Women)

Interval

Florence Price: Symphony No.4 in D minor (UK premiere)’’

‘‘Britain’s only orchestra of Black and ethnically diverse musicians returns to the Proms with music that celebrates its own heritage as well as universal dreams and aspirations.

Stewart Goodyear is the soloist in his own vibrant celebration of Caribbean music, Callaloo, while Duke Ellington’s jazzed-up take on Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker turns waltz into swing and Sugar Plum into heady rum. Conductor Andrew Grams ends with the most emotionally intense and musically robust symphony Tchaikovsky ever wrote, his heartbreakingly autobiographical ‘Pathétique’.

Broadcast live on BBC Radio 3

Performers:

Stewart Goodyear piano
Andrew Grams conductor

Programme:

Ellington & Strayhorn, arr. and adapted J. Tyzik The Nutcracker Suite
Goodyear Callaloo – Caribbean Suite for piano and orchestra
Interval
Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 in B minor, ‘Pathétique’’’

COLERIDGE-TAYLOR, MARSALIS, FLORENCE B. PRICE

‘‘It was a sensation when, at the Lucerne Summer Festival 2022, the Chineke! Orchestra and the Chineke! Junior Orchestra performed for the first time, with Die Zeit calling Chineke! “one of the most musically interesting ensembles currently touring the globe.”

Chineke! return to the festival in 2024. The concert begins with the sparkling Ballade, Op. 33, by the British composer Samuel Coleridge- Taylor, a work of late Romanticism that immediately catches the ear. It might be reminiscent of Tchaikovsky or Dvořák. The latter undoubtedly influenced the symphonic music of the African American composer Florence Price. In 2022, Yannick Nézet-Séguin introduced Price’s First Symphony to Lucerne, and now we can hear her Third. In between, things get jazzy with the Violin Concerto by the legendary trumpeter and composer Wynton’’

London School of Economics LSE Mozart Requiem

Keble College Chapel

Andrew Campling - LSE Choir

Open Your Eyes To Opera - Ravel's L'heure Espagnole

A French one-act comedic opera, featuring five talented young opera singers at the start of their careers. The opera is set in Spain in the 18th century and is about a clockmaker whose unfaithful wife attempts to see other men while he is away, leading to them hiding in, and eventually getting stuck in, her husband’s clocks.

Cast:
Torquemada, a clockmaker played by Guy Beynon
Concepción, Torquemada’s wife played by Phoebe Rayner
Gonzalve, a student poet played bv Jack Dolan
Ramiro, a muleteer played by Michael Temporal Darrell
Don Iñigo Gomez, a banker played by Dominic Felts

Conductor: Chris Stark
Assistant Conductor: Olivia Tait
Leader: John Crawford

Highlights from Orchard Street: The Opera by Emma Butterworth

Emma has recently completed her first opera, Orchard Street, funded by the Arts Council and Creative Freelancer the West of England Combined Authority. Read more about the project in the article published in Bristol 24/7

Chloé van Soeterstède conductor
RCM Philharmonic

Alejandro de la Torre In D (world premiere)
Saint-Saëns Symphony no 3 in C minor op 78

Acclaimed conductor Chloé van Soeterstède returns for this season’s second Orchestral Masterworks concert.

The RCM Philharmonic performs Saint-Saëns' masterpiece dedicated to the memory of fellow composer Liszt. Novel in its scoring, the composer included a prominent part for organ notable for dominating the famous finale. Proud of his last symphony, Saint-Saëns remarked 'I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have accomplished here, I will never achieve again.'

Also featured is a world premiere by RCM Composition Competition winner Alejandro de la Torre.

Meaningful and gripping stories through music and opera

Schumann Overture, Scherzo

Beethoven Symphony No. 2

Leslie Suganandarajah conducts Chineke! Orchestra in a programme of Coleridge-Taylor, Saint-Saëns and a world premiere by 19-year-old composer Tristen JT Watts.

Programme:

Tristen Watts: Majestique (World Premiere)

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No.3 in C minor (Organ)

Coleridge-Taylor: Symphony No.1 in A minor

Leslie Suganandarajah: Conductor