City Of London Sinfonia Reveals 2023/24 Season Featuring BISHI, Ivana Gavrić, David Greilsammer, Yvonne Howard, and More

City of London Sinfonia has announced its 2023/24 season, featuring a collaboration with singer-songwriter and electronic rock-sitarist, BISHI, exploring sound and space and culminating in Terry Riley's hypnotic communal classic, In C, as part of Sound Unwrapped at Kings Place; a scintillating double piano programme at Cadogan Hall with Ivana Gavrić and David Greilsammer; and a return to Southwark Cathedral to revisit some of the great masters of the early part of the twentieth century.

 

The 2023/24 season also sees the launch of a brand new partnership with Landmark Theatres at New Theatre Peterborough as CLS heads to Cambridgeshire with an unmissable Come and Sing! Handel's Messiah concert welcoming music-lovers, choral singers and choirs from Peterborough and beyond.

 

Rowan Rutter, Chief Executive Officer of City of London Sinfonia, said: “CLS' 23-24 season encapsulates everything we do best: explorative new collaborations, celebrating both overlooked and brilliant artists and their work, developing exciting new partnerships, and offering an opportunity to all our audiences wherever they may be, to be a part of the music, and a part of the CLS story”.

 

Alexandra Wood, Creative Director & Orchestra Leader of City of London Sinfonia, said: “I am excited as we embark on a fresh, varied and thought-provoking season. With great collaborations, in wonderful venues, it promises to be a real fusion of different characters, emotions, spirits and styles. We hope you enjoy the journey!”.

 

Paul Jepson, CEO & Creative Director of Landmark Theatres: "We are thrilled to be partnering with City of London Sinfonia and bringing this one of a kind project to our audiences and communities in Peterborough. We are committed to bringing the highest quality live entertainment to our audiences and Come and Sing! Is exactly that. This production is sure to be a fantastic experience for all our music lovers of Peterborough and beyond".

  

 

Introducing the 2023/4 season:

 

Sound Unwrapped: City of London Sinfonia with BISHI: Terry Riley In C

29 October 2023

Kings Place

 

To mark the opening of City of London Sinfonia's 2023/24 season the orchestra will be reunited with musical polymath, BISHI, for an unmissable concert spanning centuries and sound worlds, culminating in a performance of Terry Riley's hypnotic communal classic, In C.

 

The concert is part of Sound Unwrapped, the 2023 edition of Kings Place's award-winning series. Sound Unwrapped explores spatial dimensions in live performance and the creativity of sound artists, shining a light on pioneering artists and composers - past and present - who play with sound and space.

 

Curated in collaboration with the incomparable singer-songwriter and electronic rock-sitarist, BISHI, this CLS season opener will explore the rich sonic architecture of Kings Place in playful and surprising ways, juxtaposing music from across centuries from Purcell to Edward Finnis, Debussy to Max Richter.

 

BISHI is an artist, composer and producer born in London of Bengali heritage. A multi-instrumentalist, trained in both Hindustani and Western Classical styles, she studied the sitar under Gaurav Mazumdar, a senior disciple of Ravi Shankar. BISHI has recorded work with Sean Ono Lennon and Jarvis Cocker, collaborated with artists including the LSO and Kronos Quartet, as well as performing with CLS as a tanpura soloist on Jonny Greenwood's 'Water'. BISHI's first full original score for VR videogame, 'Maya: The Birth (Chapter 1)', premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2023. Two tracks from BISHI's third album, 'Let My Country Awake' – 'Do not stand at my grave and weep' and 'The Good Immigrant' – will feature in the Sound Unwrapped concert programme.

 

 

 

Ivana Gavrić plays Mendelssohn and Bach

5 December 2023

Cadogan Hall

 

Ivana Gavrić plays Mendelssohn and Bach will see CLS return to Cadogan Hall for a festive feel-good concert featuring pianist Ivana Gavrić. The uplifting programme features Mendelssohn's entrancing Concerto in D minor for violin, piano and strings, a product of the composer's prodigious teenage years; Bach's Concerto in F minor for keyboard and strings (BWV 1056); and Farrenc's Nonet in E-flat major, described as a “sonic feast for the ears”, and arguably her most popular work. A first-time collaboration between CLS and Ivana Gavrić, the programme has been jointly curated by the pianist together with Orchestra Leader, Alexandra Wood.

 

Sarajevo-born British pianist, Ivana Gavrić was crowned BBC Music Magazine's Newcomer of the Year in 2011 for her debut album, In the Mists, with her playing described as “altogether of an extraordinary calibre”. Alongside garnering praise for her interpretations of Janáček, Liszt, Schubert and Grieg, Ivana Gavrić has a long-standing collaboration with the award-winning composer, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, and is committed to performing works by female composers of the past, particularly Cécile Chaminade and Dora Pejačević. Alongside Farrenc's Nonet the concert programme will feature Chaminade 'Autrefois' for solo piano and Fanny Mendelssohn's Adagio in E major for violin and piano.

 

The performance of Nonet in E-flat major by Louise Farrenc is made possible with funding from the ABO Trust's Sirens programme, a ten-year initiative to support the performance and promotion of music by historical women composers.

 

 

 

Come and Sing! Handel's Messiah

19 December 2023

New Theatre Peterborough

 

Come and Sing! Handel's Messiah is an invitation to anyone and everyone with a passion for singing to come and join the chorus for a very special family friendly performance of Handel's Messiah at the New Theatre Peterborough.

 

A tradition of the festive season, Messiah will be performed by guest soloists including the internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano, Yvonne Howard, together with students and recent graduates from the Royal Northern College of Music, and a chorus comprised of music-lovers, choral singers, and choirs from Peterborough and beyond. Non-singers and not-quite-ready-to singers are warmly welcome too for this spirited celebration of the joy of song.

 

Messiah is a CLS' first-ever Come and Sing concert. In 1973, CLS - then the Richard Hickox Orchestra - made its Proms debut with Handel's much-loved oratorio. Five decades on, CLS - an orchestra putting participation at the heart of all its work - will present a very different take on one of the most performed pieces in the Western classical canon welcoming singing enthusiasts from Peterborough and beyond.

 

Come and join CLS for an unmissable night of glorious music – turn up, bring music*, and sing!

 

Come and Sing! Handel's Messiah is a co-production with Landmark Theatres at New Theatre Peterborough and the launch of the brand new partnership with CLS to bring unexpected and transformative classical music events and experiences to Peterborough.

 

*Novello edition edited by Watkins Shaw

 

 

 

David Greilsammer plays and conducts Mozart

31 January 2024

Cadogan Hall

 

David Greilsammer plays and conducts Mozart will mark a first-time collaboration between CLS and Israeli pianist and conductor, David Greilsammer, in a celebration of the early works of Mozart. Described by The New York Times as "one of the most accomplished and adventurous musicians of his generation”, David Greilsammer has been highly acclaimed for his Mozart interpretations. In 2008 he performed all of the composer's piano sonatas in a one-day “marathon” in Paris, and more recently he played and conducted all of Mozart's twenty-seven piano concertos across nine consecutive concerts.

 

The David Greilsammer plays and conducts Mozart programme will present four youthfully exuberant and fascinating compositions written between 1764 and 1777: Symphony No.1 in E-flat Major K.16, Symphony No. 29 in A Major K.201, Piano Concerto No. 8 in C Major K.246 “Lützow” and Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major K.271 “Jeunehomme”.

 

David Greilsammer is Music and Artistic Director of the Geneva Camerata, a role he has held since 2013. In 2022, he was appointed Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra in Columbia. His most recent solo album, “Labyrinth”, has received more than ten international prizes and was hailed by the press as “radical”, “courageous”, and “astounding”.

 

 

 

Transformed lives

21 February 2024

Southwark Cathedral

 

Transformed lives will celebrate the explosion of artistic and intellectual ideas that defined the first decade of the last century, with a programme featuring two of the leading figures of the Second Viennese School: Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. Master and pupil are reunited in a programme that will include Schoenberg's masterpiece, Verklärte Nacht, and Webern's single-movement love letter, Langsamer Satz for string quartet, composed while he was completing his first year as a student of Schoenberg.

 

Transformed lives will also feature a late Strauss, the Concerto in D major, in an arrangement by Iain Farrington for string quintet and oboe, and the 'Adagietto' from Mahler's Symphony No. 5, a moment to reflect on its calm restraint whilst taking in the breathtaking architecture and distinct acoustics throughout the cathedral.

 

 

 

City of London Sinfonia is Resident Orchestra at Opera Holland Park, a partnership that first began in 2004. Upcoming productions include: La bohème (19 July to 5 August); the world premiere of Jonathan Dove's new opera, Itch (22 July to 4 August); and Ruddigore (9 to 12 August), a new staging of Gilbert and Sullivan's comedy of ancestral ghosts, obligatory wickedness, and falsified tax returns.

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