TIL 20 Oct

12
ENGLISH SCHOOLS’ ORCHESTRA
ANNUAL GALA CONCERT
The English Schools’ Orchestra
returns to Cadogan Hall for its 2017
Annual Gala Concert on 29 October at
15.00. They will perform Berlioz’s
Roman Carnival Overture, Saint-Saëns
Violin Concerto No. 3 and Sibelius
Symphony No. 2. The Orchestra is
approaching its 25th anniversary and
continues to attract fine young
musicians from around the country to its
courses and concerts.
They will be performing with the
exciting prizewinning 12-year-old
violinist Paloma So who has already
given debut concerts with the Berlin
Symphony Orchestra and the
Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall,
alongside her mentor, the worldrenowned
Maxim Vengerov.
Twelve-year-old So is currently a
student of Wycombe Abbey School,
Buckinghamshire. She loves literature
and arts as well as outdoor sports
including tennis, swimming and skiing.
She started learning piano at the age of
four and violin at five. In February 2014,
she made her debut with the Hong Kong
Philharmonic Orchestra playing Mozart's
Violin Concerto No.5 and since then has
performed with some of the most
prestigious orchestras in concert halls
around the world.
In addition, this year the ESO is
launching its third biannual Composing
Competition, supported by the Andrew
Lloyd Webber Foundation and the
Performing Arts Society for Music.
Young composers aged 14 – 25 from
across the nation will be invited to
submit a composition for Chamber
Orchestra by the end of January 2018.
The three finalists will be selected by a
distinguished panel of judges, chaired
by Edward Gregson, and their pieces will
be performed in London by the English
Young Artists’ Sinfonia (a professional
ensemble consisting mainly of ESO
alumni) in a special invitation concert.
For tickets to Cadogan Hall on
29 October, telephone 020 7730 4500.
Paloma So.
PIANIST SONYA BACH IN CONCERT
On 3 November, pianist Sonya Bach
will join the English Chamber Orchestra
(ECO) to perform an evening of music by
J.S. Bach – three works from her debut
album recorded with the ECO featuring
Bach’s six concertos for keyboard and
orchestra, and the Italian Concerto which
was released in September 2017 by the
UK label Rubicon Classics.
Sonya has won the hearts of
audiences and critics alike appearing on
the most prestigious concert stages of
Europe, North America and Asia. She
feels particularly honoured to have been
invited to appear in a recital promoted
by the Catalunya Government for the
victims and survivors of Ravensbruck
Women’s Concentration Camp and to be
featured as the first classical musician to
perform at the newly inaugurated
Community Theatre and Arts Centre in
Dubai, UAE under the patronage of
HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum.
Renowned for her unique artistry and
compelling insight into music from the
Baroque period to the present day,
Jennifer Pike has established herself as
one of today’s most exciting
instrumentalists and she joins the ECO
as violin soloist in Brandenburg
Concerto No. 4 and Bach’s concerto for
oboe and violin.
ALICE COLTRANE ASHRAM PROJECT
A special celebration of the life,
music and spirit of Alice Coltrane
Turiyasangitananda will take place at
LSO St Luke’s on 18 November. The
Ashram Community Singers will perform
in this intimate and serene space, the
perfect setting to extend the feeling and
energy of Alice’s LA-based ashram to
London. The performance will feature the
devotional music Alice invented –
inspired by the gospel music of the
Detroit churches she grew up in, mixed
together with the Indian devotional
music of her religious practice.
In the late 1970s, Alice Coltrane
adopted the Sanskrit name
Turiyasangitananda as she embraced the
spirituality that became so central to the
last four decades of her life. By 1983,
she had established a 48-acre Sai
Anantam Ashram at which she began to
record music which was released only
within her spiritual community in the
form of private cassette tapes. In May of
2017, with the blessing of Alice’s
children, Luaka Bop released a
compilation of these songs titled World
Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The
Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane,
available to the public for the first time.
These concerts precede ‘A Concert for
Alice and John Coltrane’ at the Barbican
Hall, featuring Pharoah Sanders Quartet,
Denys Baptiste and Alina Bzhezhinska.
Sonya Bach.
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