Press room

Gabriel Kahane
Sun 7 Apr, Milton Court Concert Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £20 – 25 plus booking fee

American composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane (voice, piano, guitar) will make his Barbican contemporary music programme debut in an intimate solo show at Milton Court Concert Hall on 7 April 2019. Here he presents material from his most recent album Book of Travelers as well as from his earlier releases The Ambassador and Where are the Arms.

The day after the 2016 presidential election, Kahane boarded a train at Penn Station and travelled 8,980 miles around the continental U.S. with no phone or internet access, talking to dozens of strangers in an attempt to better understand his country and fellow citizens. The resulting album, Book of Travelers, marks Gabriel’s debut for Nonesuch Records. This collection of songs is at once a prayer for empathy and reconciliation, as well as an unflinching examination of the complex and often troubled history of the United States.

Gabriel Kahane has collaborated with a diverse array of artists, including Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, Blake Mills, Chris Thile, Punch Brothers, and Paul Simon, for whom he arranged Bridge Over Troubled Water, heard throughout Simon’s farewell tour in 2018. As a composer, Kahane has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, A Far Cry, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Produced by the Barbican 

On sale to Barbican members on Thursday 6 December 2018
On general sale on Friday 7 December 2018
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Las Maravillas de Mali
Thu 2 May, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £20 – 30 plus booking fee

Formed in the early 1960s, Las Maravillas de Mali has since become a flagship ensemble of the Afro-Cuban musical tradition, singing in Spanish, Bambara and French. The legendary orchestra’s current line-up will take to the Barbican stage for the first time in May 2019, accompanied by Guinean singer Mory Kanté.

In the middle of the Cold War, the early Sixties was a period of Communist friendship between the Africa of independence and the revolutionary Cuba of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and in 1964, the Cuban government invited ten young musicians from Mali to study in Havana. These young people spent seven years studying music in Cuba, marking the beginning of Las Maravillas de Mali.  

The group recorded one self-titled album in 1968, which included the song that became one of the greatest hits in this revolutionary era: Rendez-Vous Chez Fatimata, combining Cuban influences with traditional Malian sounds.  

Las Maravillas de Mali’s story came to the attention of French producer Richard Minier in 1999 and he decided on the renaissance of the ensemble. Together with the band’s remaining survivor and original member, Boncana Maïga, Minier retraced the group’s steps and went to Havana on several occasions, re-recording new versions of the album’s songs in the same surroundings as before, in the now legendary Egrem studios.

Las Maravillas de Mali’s Barbican line-up includes: Boncana Maïga (composer, conductor), Mory Kanté (vocals), Pepe Rivero (piano), Florent José Alapini aka. Jospinto (vocals), Juancito Hurtado (vocals), David Reicer (flute), Eduardo Coma (violin), Armando Garcia Fernandez (violin), Reicel Pedroso Diaz (violin), Nahomi Stephany (viola), Inor Sotolongo (timpani), Abraham Mansfarroll (congas), Sergio Fernandez Pedroza (piano) and Felipe Cabrera Cardenas (bass).

Produced by the Barbican in association with Como No  

On sale to Barbican members on Thursday 6 December 2018
On general sale on Friday 7 December 2018
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Andrew Bird
Thu 13 June 2019, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £25 – 32.50 plus booking fee

Acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and songwriter Andrew Bird makes a welcome and long-awaited return to the Barbican in June 2019, following his sold-out show at the Centre in March 2012. This concert will see him perform alongside his band and feature recently released new track Bloodless as well as a selection of material from Bird’s extensive back catalogue.

Andrew Bird picked up his first violin at the age of four and spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear. Since beginning his recording career in 1997, he has released 13 albums and performed extensively worldwide.

Bird has been a featured TED Talks presenter, a New York Times contributor, and hosts an ongoing livestreamed series of performances called Live from the Great Room, putting the creative process on display for fans as he performs and converses with friends and collaborators in a candid, intimate setting.

In recent years Bird has recorded a series of site-specific improvisational short films and recordings called Echolocations, created in remote and acoustically interesting spaces: a Utah canyon, an abandoned seaside bunker, the middle of the Los Angeles River, and a reverberant stone-covered aqueduct in Lisbon. Bird is currently at work on a new album due for release in 2019.

Produced by the Barbican in association with Eat Your Own Ears 

On sale to Barbican members on Thursday 6 December 2018
On general sale on Friday 7 December 2018
Find out more

Lucinda Williams 
Sat 27 Jul 2019, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £25 – 35 plus booking fee

Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams performs her critically acclaimed, influential masterpiece Car Wheels On A Gravel Road in its entirety followed by a second set of songs from her celebrated career. Williams will be joined on stage by her long-time backing band Buick 6, featuring Butch Norton on drums, David Sutton on bass and Stuart Mathis on guitar.

2018 marked the 20th Anniversary of Williams’ Grammy Award-winning Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. The story of the making of the album, and how long it took, is quite remarkable: The changing producers, the re-recording, the revolving list of musicians only add to the folklore surrounding its creation. However, the album came to be and Williams never wavered on her vision for this masterpiece, and what she envisioned changed music on a multitude of levels. 

Produced by the Barbican 

On sale to Barbican members on Thursday 6 December 2018
On general sale on Friday 7 December 2018
Find out more