Southbank Centre Honours Alexander McQueen at Multitudes Festival

The Southbank Centre has announced the full line-up for the return of Multitudes, its multi-arts festival powered by orchestral music, running from 16-30 April 2026 as part of the centre's 75th anniversary year.

A centrepiece of the festival's programme is Un-natural Harmony: The Sound of Alexander McQueen (29–30 April), a major new collaboration between the London Contemporary Orchestra, Robert Ames, and John Gosling, McQueen's longtime music director and collaborator. The multi-arts concert is a reimagining of the music which inspired Alexander McQueen's most iconic fashion runways in a live orchestral setting.

Bringing to life the soundworld that defined McQueen's theatrical, subversive runway shows, the performance reworks their rich, textural music through a live score, by co-creative directors John Gosling and Robert Ames. Under the direction of Elayce Ismail, the concert features a new film by Douglas Hart and Eddie Whelan, and a live performance choreographed by the critically acclaimed Holly Blakey.

The concert draws together an eclectic and emotionally charged repertoire spanning centuries and genres, reflecting Gosling and McQueen's collaboratively bold and fearless approach to music as a narrative force. From Purcell's lyrical Dido and Aeneas and Handel's Sarabande to the stillness of Mozart's II. Adagio: Piano Concerto No.23, Un-natural Harmony: The Sound of Alexander McQueen weaves together an evening of music that moves between beauty and brutality, restraint and excess. These canonical works are set against contemporary popular music that featured prominently in McQueen's runways, including The Rolling Stones' Paint It, Black and the last track of the designer's final runway, Plato Atlantis – Lady Gaga's Bad Romance.

Launched in 2025 to critical and audience acclaim, Multitudes reimagines the orchestral music experience by fusing it with fashion, dance, film, circus and visual art. The multi-arts festival features all six of the Southbank Centre's six Resident Orchestras – Aurora Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Philharmonia Orchestra – alongside a stellar lineup of world-class musicians, musical ensembles, dancers, visual artists and filmmakers.

Having attracted 59% new bookers to the Southbank Centre's classical music programme in its debut year, Multitudes looks to the future of classical music through bold, interdisciplinary work that expands the possibilities of the orchestral experience while celebrating its scale, power and emotional depth. The festival sits within the Southbank Centre's visionary Spring/Summer classical season, building on its 75-year history as one of the UK's foremost presenters of classical music.

The 2026 Programme Includes 

• Aurora Orchestra performs Stravinsky's radical The Rite of Spring entirely from memory in The Rite by Heart (16 Apr) with a dramatised production illuminating the process of the work's creation.
   
• Philharmonia Orchestra pushes musical boundaries in Forged in Sound: Heavy Metal Orchestrated (22 Apr) as rock and heavy metal collide with the unmistakable intensity of live orchestral music, with repertoire including Wagner's iconic Ride of the Valkyries.
   
• A super-sized Royal Philharmonic Orchestra combines huge symphonic scale with mesmerising animations and live action from visual theatre makers 1927 Studios in a truly immersive performance of Messiaen's Turangalîla: Infinite Love (23 Apr).
   
• The London Philharmonic Orchestra presents Alban Berg's devastating opera Wozzeck: Wretches Like Us (25 Apr) in a semi-staged production brimming with drama and intrigue, with filmed and staged elements in collaboration with video artist and director Ilya Shagalov.
   
• BBC Concert Orchestra and visual artist Mat Collishaw bring to life an immersive interpretation of Franz Liszt's apocalyptic Dante Symphony, inspired by Dante's infamous vision of hell, in Inferno. Featuring a new work from composer Fiona Brice and rapper and multi-disciplinary artist TaliaBle (29 Apr). 
   
• Resident Artist Manchester Collective collaborates with queer dance-theatre company Thick & Tight and electronic music artist CHAINES (Cee Haines) for Papillons (30 Apr), centred on Kaija Saariaho's delicate yet intense Sept Papillons for solo cello.
   
• Circa presents astonishing floor-based circus interpretations of Bach's The Art of Fugue, performed by the virtuosic Australian Brandenburg Orchestra across three performances (24–25 Apr).
   
• Step into a world of surround sound with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Echoes of Hill and Horizon. The orchestra performs works by Vaughan Williams written for vast echoing cathedrals, using the Southbank Centre's bespoke Concrete Voids sound system to turn the Queen Elizabeth Hall into a three-dimensional instrument, with immersive visuals from light art pioneers Squidsoup (22 Apr). 
   
• Fuel and Chineke! Orchestra present An Evening with an Immigrant, an acclaimed solo show written and performed by Inua Ellams, with the world premiere of a specially commissioned breathtaking new score composed by Laura Mvula and performed by Chineke! Orchestra (26 Apr).
   
• The London Sinfonietta joins forces with Out-Spoken, a champion for diversity of voice in writing and performance, for a Sympoesia: a night of mid-century poetry and new musical commissions, highlighting contemporary voices in dialogue with classical music. Featuring Out-Spoken's Joelle Taylor and Anthony Anaxagorou (30 Apr).
   
• Un-natural Harmony: The Sound of Alexander McQueen (29–30 Apr), a multi-arts tribute celebrating the enduring influence of one of fashion's most visionary figures, in collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra.

On her composition for An Evening with an Immigrant, Laura Mvula, MOBO Award-winning singer and composer, said: “It's been really exciting for me to approach An Evening with an Immigrant as a composer responding to Inua's beautiful poetry; it's a collaboration and process that really resonates with me. In An Evening with an Immigrant, Inua has managed to voice so many stories in his unique, poignant and critically important style. It's a pleasure to create music that both deepens and highlights the show's incisive, urgent and bold words.”

Mark Ball, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre, said: “Multitudes reflects the Southbank Centre's belief that classical music is a living art form, shaped by new exchange between artists and collaboration across artistic disciplines. It excites younger audiences and first time attenders, bringing them into an encounter with the full force of classical music via diverse artistic touchpoints. As we celebrate our 75th anniversary, the festival looks forward – drawing on the depth of the classical canon while opening it up to new ways of experiencing live performance. Multitudes invites audiences to encounter orchestral music afresh, and situates its place within the Southbank Centre as a forward-looking, evolving art form, deeply connected to a wider culture around it.”