Press room

The Barbican today announces a series of summer jazz concerts in collaboration with Serious, featuring jazz legends and newcomers alike. The EFG London Jazz Festival Summer Series will feature artists from pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, to saxophonist Branford Marsalis, to singer, songwriter and pianist Kandace Springs.

The Barbican also announces additional concerts today in its eclectic and varied music programme. Pioneering group Kronos Quartet make a stop at the Barbican on their 50th anniversary tour, and Lebanese-American indie-rock musician Hamed Sinno, of Arabic indie-rock band Mashrou' Leila, will take to the Barbican stage for this year's Shubbak Festival.

Full details for each of the concerts can be found below.

~

EFG London Jazz Festival Summer Series

The Barbican and Serious join forces to present a trio of summer concerts featuring some of the greatest jazz musicians of our time. From instrumentalist giants to world-class vocalists, the Summer Series will pave the way for a momentous autumn of jazz at the Barbican - with the return of EFG London Jazz Festival and its usual exciting line-up and inspiring collaborations in November - to be announced later this year.

 

Kandace Springs

+ Artemis

Nashville-based singer, songwriter and pianist Kandace Springs brings her soul-drenched vocals to the Barbican Hall, performing material from her latest album The Women Who Raised Me (Blue Note, 2020).

With her most personal work yet, Springs makes her Barbican debut with a loving tribute to the great female singers who inspired her to become one of the premier jazz and soul vocalists alive today. “My father used to play me records when I was young, and I fell in love right away with all these great singers,” says Springs. “I literally learned to do what I do by singing along with them. Ever since, I’ve wanted to pay that forward by reminding people how great these ladies are.”

Springs will also perform new, unreleased material and will be joined by Artemis, the multinational, multigenerational ensemble of modern masters who will bring original music and mind-bending arrangements of eclectic material to London audiences, performing with power, passion and high-wire intensity.

Produced by the Barbican in association with Serious

Find out more

 

Branford Marsalis Quartet

Saxophonist Branford Marsalis and his celebrated quartet return to the Barbican to perform their uncompromising interpretations of both original jazz compositions and popular standards.

One of the most revered and influential figures in contemporary jazz, Marsalis received early acclaim by bringing a new energy, and new audiences, to jazz and has since built a career as a musician composer, bandleader and educator. An NEA Jazz Master, GRAMMY award winner, and Tony award nominee, Marsalis has performed in a spectrum of ensembles, from symphony orchestras to small groups, to sitting in with the Grateful Dead – but the Branford Marsalis Quartet remains the core of his musical universe. After three decades of performing together, the Branford Marsalis Quartet has long been recognised as the standard against which other ensembles of its nature must be measured.

The Branford Marsalis Quartet is Branford Marsalis (saxophone), Joey Calderazzo (piano), Eric Revis (bass guitar) and Justin Faulkner (drums).

Produced by the Barbican in association with Serious

Find out more

 

Abdullah Ibrahim Trio

South Africa’s most distinguished pianist Abdullah Ibrahim returns to the Barbican joined by his trio of Cleave Guyton (flute, piccolo, saxophone) and Noah Jackson (bass, cello). Following a sold-out solo concert as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival 2022, the world-respected master musician will bring a mesmerising performance to the Barbican Hall.

Journeying through a lifetime’s experience, Ibrahim will take audiences from the musical melting pot of his upbringing of gospel, jive, American jazz, sacred and secular classical music, to the music of his jazz heroes. Echoes of Ellington and Coltrane will be skilfully embroidered into this evening of free-flowing piano inventions.

Produced by the Barbican in association with Serious

Find out more

 

~

 

Kronos Quartet: Five Decades

The pioneering Kronos Quartet return to the Barbican Hall for a special performance as part of their 50th anniversary tour. For five decades, the San Francisco group (comprising violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, viola-player Hank Dutt, and cellist Paul Wiancko) has challenged and reimagined what a string quartet can be. Founded at a time when the string quartet form centred around Western European traditions, Kronos has since been central to revolutionising the string quartet into a living artform – using it to respond to both people and issues of our time.

This special anniversary performance will include Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet and selections from beloved albums like Pieces of Africa and Nuevo, as well as pieces by George Crumb, Dumisani Maraire, Terry Riley, Peni Candra Rini, Alfred Schnittke and more.

“Kronos Quartet has broken the boundaries of what string quartets do” – The New York Times

Produced by the Barbican and Serious

Find out more

 

Hamed Sinno: Poems of Consumption

Lebanese-American indie-rock musician Hamed Sinno returns to the Barbican to debut solo material as part of this year's Shubbak Festival. After performing at the Barbican in 2015 with Mashrou' Leila, one of the most prominent indie-rock groups of the Arab world, Sinno makes a solo return with a new project, Poems of Consumption, co-commissioned by Shubbak Festival and the Barbican.

Poems of Consumption is a literary song cycle exploring the resonances between consumerism in the era of Amazon, mental wellbeing, environmental collapse and unrequited love. In it we meet “Nero”, a desolate, working-class melancholic, crying in Whole Foods while the world outside comes to a boil. The compositions combine and contrast the soaring romanticism of strings with hyper-industrialist electronica created using hallmarks of consumerism: cellophane, bubble-wrap, unboxings and tearing plastic, swinging between the dancefloor and an aural assault.

Produced by the Barbican in collaboration with MARSM

Find out more