Press room

Barbican announces details for its music programme in autumn and winter 2022, featuring the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Daniel Harding, the Australian Chamber Orchestra with Richard Tognetti, Allan Clayton, Alison Balsom, Iestyn Davies, Youssou N’Dour, Ravi Coltrane, The Divine Comedy, Isata Kanneh-Mason and many more

The Barbican today announced its autumn/winter music season (September 2022 – January 2023), featuring some of the greatest international artists and exciting collaborations, including the return of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Daniel Harding; the world premiere production of An Anatomy of Melancholy – a new theatrical experience directed by Netia Jones featuring Iestyn Davies; Samantha Ege’s Black Renaissance recital; Ravi Coltrane; Youssou N’Dour;  The Divine Comedy presenting five concerts; star trumpeter Alison Balsom in recital alongside organist Anna Lapwood; a special performance of Schubert’s Winterreise with tenor Allan Clayton alongside projections of artwork by Fred Williams; and John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London in their Barbican debut, joined by soprano Alice Coote.

At the centre of our programme will be world-class offers from our family of residents and associates: Resident Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, Associate Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Associate Ensemble, Academy of Ancient Music, Associate Ensemble, Britten Sinfonia and International Associate Ensemble at Milton Court, the Australian Chamber Orchestra with Richard Tognetti.

“We’re very fortunate at the Barbican to have been able to continue our programmes throughout the pandemic, in one way or another. This season however feels like a new beginning and it is wonderful to be able to welcome back old friends like the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from Amsterdam and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, with whom we have had such close partnerships over the years, and to present international icons such as Youssou N’Dour and Souad Massi. Our family of Resident and Associate orchestras and ensembles are the bedrock of extraordinary music making through the season, and we are now finally able to present some of the projects that were originally planned for 2020, like Netia Jones’ An Anatomy of Melancholy, a contemplation of sadness alongside the healing power of music. In looking forward to stabler times, we have invited new artists to our programme, such as electronic music duo Autechre, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, organist Anna Lapwood, and The Hermes Experiment, and look forward to various different collaborations that further broaden our unrivalled programme. I hope you can join us on this journey!” said Huw Humphreys, Head of Music at the Barbican.

Highlights of the Barbican’s music programme in autumn and winter 2022/23 include the following newly and some previously announced concerts. Full programme information can be found here. 

Priority booking for the Barbican’s newly announced autumn/winter 2022/23 music season opens for Principal and Premier Patrons on 31 March 2022, Patrons on 4 April 2022, Members Plus on 6 April 2022, and Members on 7 April 2022. General booking opens on 8 April 2022. Discounted tickets are available to 14 – 25-year-olds through Young Barbican.

 

RESIDENCIES   

• Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time – Thirty Years of The Divine Comedy sees a five-night concert-run by the band, playing two albums in full each night (31 Aug – 4 Sep)
• Barbican International Associate Ensemble at Milton Court, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Director Richard Tognetti return for a three-concert-residency as part of the UK/Australia Season 2021-22 (27 – 29 Oct)
• Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and conductor Daniel Harding perform two concerts, joined on the first night by acclaimed violinist Leonidas Kavakos (3 – 4 Nov)

SPECIAL PROJECTS

• American rock band Dirty Projectors team up with s t a r g a z e collective for a special new project: Song of the Earth, reframing Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (8 Oct)
• Anoushka Shankar teams up with Barbican Associate Ensemble Britten Sinfonia in their 30th birthday season, in new arrangements of her music for sitar, percussion (Manu Delago) and orchestra by conductor Jules Buckley (15 Oct)
• An Anatomy of Melancholy – a new theatrical experience with live and immersive video projection, featuring countertenor Iestyn Davies, lutenist Thomas Dunford, director Netia Jones and the music of John Dowland. This world premiere production examines humanity’s relationship with melancholy – both the emotional and the scientific – and takes inspiration from the notion of art as a consolation (27 – 30 Oct)
• Pianist Clare Hammond brings a sequence of fragments, last thoughts, elegies and absences by Schubert, Mozart, Wagner, Janáček, Stravinsky, Jacquet de la Guerre and Schumann, interposed with movements from John Woolrich’s Pianobooks to Barbican Cinema 1, performed alongside specially conceived images from the Quay Brothers (30 Oct)
• Carducci Quartet explore the intense connection between the two Mendelssohn siblings, through the composers’ music and spoken word excerpts adapted from Myla Lichtman-Fields’s play, Fanny and Felix. (24 Nov)
• Julia Holter presents her new soundtrack alongside a screening of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc, performed live with the Chorus of Opera North, plus Julia’s own band (25 Nov)
• In Total Immersion Discovering George Walker, the BBC SO celebrates George Walker, the first African-American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize, in what would have been his 100th birthday year (26 Nov)
• Black Renaissance: Music, Lives and Legacy with pianist and musicologist Samantha Ege featuring works by Robert Nathaniel Dett, Zenobia Powell Perry, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Nora Holt, William Grant Still, and Florence Price. Pianist Artina McCain joins Samantha Ege for the two-piano pieces on the programme (29 Nov)
• Tenor Allan Clayton and pianist Kate Golla perform Schubert’s Winterreise, directed by Lindy Hume, with projections of artwork by the late Australian landscapist Fred Williams and videography from David Bergman (Wed 7 Dec)
• A powerful new adaptation by Neil Brand of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles is the BBC SO’s hair-raising Christmas offering (20 Dec)

EARLY MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS

• Barbican Associate Ensemble Academy of Ancient Music brings Haydn's oratorio, The Seasons, to life with striking new visuals by Nina Dunn Studio (4 Oct)  
• Barbican Associate Ensemble Britten Sinfonia’s long-standing association with conductor Stephen Layton and Polyphony finds full voice in a festive performance of Parts 1, 2, 3 and 6 of Bach’s magnificent Christmas Oratorio (12 Dec).
• Les Arts Florissants and conductor William Christie perform some of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s most exquisite, but rarely performed Nativity music (19 Dec)

RECITALS

• ECHO Rising Stars: Guildhall School of Music & Drama alumnus, British baritone James Newby performs alongside pianist Joseph Middleton (7 Oct)
• Piano virtuoso Isata Kanneh-Mason makes her Barbican Hall solo debut (10 Oct)
• Star trumpeter Alison Balsom teams up with trailblazing organist Anna Lapwood (14 Oct)
• ECHO Rising Stars: Violinist Diana Tishchenko (18 Nov)
• Internationally renowned, leading Baroque violinist Rachel Podger presents a solo violin recital (15 Dec)

MUSIC FROM NORTH AND SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

• Celebrated Algerian chaâbi-folk musician Souad Massi, brings her melodic songs with themes around Algeria, politics, love, freedom and emancipation. Support comes from Palestinian artist Ruba Shamshoum (29 Oct)
• Senegalese music icon Youssou N’Dour presents material from his 2021 album Mbalax alongside his band Super Étoile de Dakar (3 Nov)

BARBICAN MUSIC PROGRAMME DEBUTS

• Cutting-edge English electronic music duo Autechre will come to the Barbican for the first time, giving two performances in one evening (7 Oct)   
• Grammy award-winning Irish-American vocalist and songwriter Aoife O’Donovan performs solo and with a string quartet (2 Nov)
• John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London mark their Barbican debut with a UK premiere performance of the original ballet version of Maurice Ravel’s most enduringly popular work Boléro. The orchestra will also be joined by mezzo-soprano Alice Coote for Ravel’s Shéhérazade. (2 Dec)

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL

• Brooklyn-based contemporary ensemble Sō Percussion teams up with award-winning composer Caroline Shaw to perform selections from her two 2021 albums (4 Dec)
• Seven Septets – guided-improv pieces from some of the most exciting composer-performers in the UK’s music scene today, including: Jas Kayser, Angela Wai Nok Hui, Fred Thomas, Kit Downes, Héloïse Werner, Laura Moody and Colin Alexander (6 Dec)
• Contemporary quartet The Hermes Experiment collaborate with composer and turntablist Shiva Feshareki on a new Barbican co-commissioned work. (26 Jan). This concert is dedicated to the memory of artist and composer Mira Calix. 

DARBAR FESTIVAL 2022

• Darbar Festival of Indian classical music returns (8 – 16 Oct), featuring a magical mix of emerging raw young talent from India and the UK, master performers making their UK debuts and performances featuring world class legends, maestros and maestras, with artists as part of the line-up including: Shubha Mudgal, Purbayan Chatterjee, Rakesh Chaurasia, Uday Bhawalkar, Bharathi Prathap, Wahane Sisters Duo and Rajrupa Chowdhury

JAZZ

• Critically acclaimed Grammy-nominated saxophonist, bandleader and composer Ravi Coltrane brings his Cosmic Music project – a contemporary exploration into the music of his parents John and Alice Coltrane (11 Oct)
• Generation-defining jazz musicians saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Brad Mehldau, drummer Brian Blade and bassist, composer and arranger Christian McBride revisit their classic 1994 album, MoodSwing (14 Nov)
• Gianandrea Noseda will conduct the LSO in a concert with guest soloist, saxophonist Jess Gillam. The programme includes Carlos Simon’s This Land and Warmth From Other Suns, John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto, Leonard Bernstein’s Divertimento for Orchestra and George Gershwin’s An American in Paris (17 Nov)

Barbican

The Barbican’s own-promotion music programme in 2022/23 welcomes back an incredible array of international orchestras and world-class artists, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Daniel Harding and acclaimed violinist Leonidas Kavakos (3-4 Nov), Barbican International Associate Ensemble at Milton Court, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Director Richard Tognetti who return for a three-concerts-residency as part of the UK/Australia Season 2021-22 (27 – 29 Oct), music icons Souad Massi (29 Oct) and Youssou N’Dour alongside his band Super Étoile de Dakar (3 Nov), The Divine Comedy celebrating their 30th anniversary with a five-night concert run (31 Aug – 4 Sep), recitals from pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason (10 Oct) and star trumpeter Alison Balsom who teams up with trailblazing organist Anna Lapwood (14 Oct) as well as a recital of Black Renaissance music by pianist Samantha Ege (29 Nov), a Barbican debut from John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London who will be joined by mezzo-soprano Alice Coote (2 Dec), the return of  Darbar Festival of Indian classical music (8 – 16 Oct), a series of specially curated  projects with a staged and/or multi-media elements including Barbican Associate Ensemble Academy of Ancient Music bringing Haydn's oratorio, The Seasons, to life with striking new visuals by Nina Dunn Studio (4 Oct), the world premiere production of An Anatomy of Melancholy – a new theatrical experience with live and immersive video projection, featuring countertenor Iestyn Davies, lutenist Thomas Dunford, director Netia Jones and the music of John Dowland (27 – 30 Oct), Schubert’s Winterreise performed by tenor Allan Clayton and pianist Kate Golla with direction from Lindy Hume and projections of artwork by Fred Williams and videography from David Bergman (7 Dec),  Julia Holter’s new soundtrack for the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, performed live with the Chorus of Opera North, plus Julia’s own band (25 Nov), pianist Clare Hammond brings a sequence of fragments, last thoughts, elegies and absences to Cinema 1, performed in the dark with specially conceived images from the Quay Brothers (30 Oct), the Carducci Quartet exploring the intense connection between the two Mendelssohn siblings, through the composers’ music and spoken word excerpts adapted from Myla Lichtman-Fields’s play, Fanny and Felix (24 Nov), innovative collaborations include American rock band Dirty Projectors teaming up with s t a r g a z e collective for a special new project: Song of the Earth, reframing Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (8 Oct),  Brooklyn-based contemporary ensemble Sō Percussion performing with award-winning composer Caroline Shaw (4 Dec), Seven Septets – bringing together some of the most exciting composer-performers in the UK music scene today: Jas Kayser, Angela Wai Nok Hui, Fred Thomas, Kit Downes, Héloïse Werner, Laura Moody and Colin Alexander (6 Dec) and contemporary quartet The Hermes Experiment collaborating with composer and turntablist Shiva Feshareki with the performance dedicated to the memory of artist and composer Mira Calix (26 Jan).  

Full event details of the Barbican’s autumn/winter 2022/23 music season can be found here and here.

London Symphony Orchestra

The first four months of the Barbican’s Resident Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2022/23 Season features the customary eclectic and intriguing mix of music, guest conductors, and soloists. Sir Simon Rattle embarks on his final season as Music Director, before becoming Conductor Emeritus in 2023. His concerts will mark a return to the big works that the LSO has not been able to perform since the start of the pandemic. Sir Simon opens the proceedings with an all-British programme, featuring Elgar’s Symphony No 2 Op 63, Frank Bridge’s tone poem Enter Spring and the world premiere of an LSO commission by Daniel Kidane, Precipice Dances. Over the next few weeks, audiences can enjoy Sir Simon conducting programmes exploring Bruckner Symphony 7, Sibelius’ The Oceanides Op 73 and Tapiola Op 112, Rachmaninoff’s Symphony 3 Op 44, a special programme of Stravinsky curated by himself and two great choral works Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater Op 53 and Brahms’ German Requiem Op 45.  In January 2023, he continues his exploration of Janáček operas with Katya Kabanova and an all-star line-up of singers.

Andre J. Thomas, American gospel specialist, returns to the LSO to conduct an evening of gospel and an all-American symphonic evening of recent works by Black American composers Wynton Marsalis, Carlos Simon and Joel Thompson. Gianandrea Noseda, Nathalie Stutzman and Kevin John Edusei are guest conductors and there are performances by leading guest soloists, saxophonist Jess Gillam, violinist Janine Jansen, and pianists Pavel KaIesnikov, Evgeny Kissin, Alice Sara Ott, and Mitsuko Uchida.

https://lso.co.uk/autumn2022

BBC Symphony Orchestra

The Barbican’s Associate Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra opens its season with Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo giving the world premiere of French composer Sophie Lacaze’s Sighs of the Stars. Boris Giltburg joins the orchestra for Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto and the concert concludes with Prokofiev’s Cinderella Suite No. 1 (5 Oct).

Oramo also leads the first Total Immersion of the season exploring the life and work of his fellow Finn in Sibelius the Storyteller, when the BBC Symphony Orchestra is joined by the BBC Singers, musicians from Guildhall School and soprano Anu Komsi for a day of talks and music exploring the forests, landscapes, traditions and stories that shaped Sibelius’ distinctive musical vision (9 Oct).

In the second Total Immersion of the season, Discovering George Walker, the BBC SO celebrates George Walker, the first African-American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize, in what would have been his 100th birthday year. Since his death in 2018 Walker has come to be regarded as an American musical statesman. This Total Immersion day examines many facets of his output from his chamber works developed under the tutoring of Nadia Boulanger with musicians from Guildhall School, his powerful songs with the BBC Singers and, in the climax of the day, his potent orchestral works under the baton of Alpesh Chauhan with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (26 Nov).

Principal Guest Conductor Dalia Stasevska teams up with Sol Gabetta for Elgar’s Cello Concerto, the centrepiece of a concert exploring natural wonders with Dai Fujikura’s Glorious Clouds which imagines the orchestra as a microbiome and Sibelius’ celebration of nature as a patriotic anthem in his Symphony No. 1 (21 Oct).

Jennifer Pike joins the BBC SO for Vaughan Williams’s enduringly popular The Lark Ascending marking the end of a year-long celebration celebrating 150 years since his birth. Young German conductor Clemens Schuldt makes his Barbican debut with the orchestra in works by Britten, Strauss and the world premiere of Deborah Pritchard’s Calandra, commissioned by the BBC. (9 Dec).

A powerful new adaptation by Neil Brand of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles is the BBC SO’s hair-raising Christmas offering. A cast of eight actors join the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers for this one-off dramatisation of Conan Doyle’s gripping, best-selling mystery (20 Dec).

The BBC SO is well-known for presenting new and neglected work, and this season is no exception. Kirill Karabits conducts Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshinsky’s Symphony No 3, an epic, intensely dramatic work. Anna Fedorova joins for Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 3 (15 Jan). In contrast to the little-known Lyatoshinsky, Mahler’s 5th Symphony is the centrepiece of a concert featuring soprano Sophie Bevan, conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth and featuring the UK premiere of his Till Dawning (20 Jan).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/symphonyorchestra

Academy of Ancient Music

Barbican Associate Ensemble Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) launches 'Tis nature's voice, its season-long musical exploration of the environment and our place within it with Haydn's life-affirming oratorio, The Seasons (4 Oct). AAM Music Director Laurence Cummings conducts a world-beating team of soloists – Sophie Bevan (soprano), Benjamin Hulett (tenor) and Jonathan Lemalu (bass-baritone) – in a performance co-produced by the Barbican. Striking new visuals created by digital projection specialists at Nina Dunn Studios bring The Seasons vividly to life and pull the imagination into Haydn's creative world. 

Laurence Cummings conducts a virtuosic celebration of nature and music – baroque style (10 Nov). Frogs and toads invade a concerto, and wind instruments turn into songbirds. All of nature is here, in music that's alternately playful, touching and elemental in its ingenuity and power. Cummings directs soloists from within AAM, and begins with arguably the most astonishing natural wonder in all baroque music: Jean-Féry Rebel's ear-tingling Les Élémens. Music that was ahead of its time then – and more timely than ever today.

On 16 Dec, Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music join an exceptional team of internationally recognised soloists headed by the outstanding American soprano Amanda Forsythe for a seasonal performance of Handel's Messiah.

https://aam.co.uk/

Britten Sinfonia

Barbican Associate Ensemble Britten Sinfonia celebrates its 30th anniversary with an Autumn marked out by new commissions, artistic collaborations and a distinctive seasonal performance of a landmark work.  Anoushka Shankar teams up with the orchestra to open the season building on their 2020 BBC Proms collaboration in new arrangements of Shankar’s music for sitar, percussion (Manu Delago) and orchestra by conductor Jules Buckley (15 Oct). Earlier in the day, there’s more new music in a showcase of work by Jonathan Brigg, Nathan James Dearden and Aileen Sweeney, who have been supported by and commissioned through the orchestra’s Magnum Opus scheme for early-career composers (15 Oct). Britten Sinfonia’s long standing association with conductor Stephen Layton and Polyphony finds full voice in an evocative festive performance of Parts 1, 2, 3 and 6 of Bach’s magnificent Christmas Oratorio (12 Dec)

https://brittensinfonia.com/whats-on/

The Barbican believes in creating space for people and ideas to connect through its international arts programme, community events and learning activity. To keep its programme accessible to everyone, and to keep investing in the artists it works with, the Barbican needs to raise more than 60% of its income through ticket sales, commercial activities and fundraising every year. Donations can be made here: barbican.org.uk/donate.