Press room

Barbican announces details for its music programme in autumn 2021 featuring Joyce DiDonato, Lang Lang, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle, world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Up for Grabs with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Nicola Benedetti, Davóne Tines, Christina Pluhar with L’Arpeggiata, Archie Shepp & Jason Moran, Alfa Mist, and Clark

The Barbican’s music programme returns in autumn 2021 with full capacity live audiences and with some of the concerts also available as livestreams. We’re looking forward to welcoming back superstar soloists and emerging artists, Barbican Resident Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and our family of associate orchestras and ensembles as well as autumn regulars such as the EFG London Jazz and Darbar festivals. 

Huw Humphreys, Barbican’s Head of Music says:

Following the challenges over the last 18 months during which live music came to a complete halt at times, we are delighted that we can today announce a great new concert season for autumn 2021 when the Barbican Hall re-opens its doors to full capacity audiences. The programme will see world-renowned artists such as Joyce DiDonato, Davóne Tines, Lang Lang, Nicola Benedetti, Khatia Buniatishvili and Archie Shepp return to the Barbican, and others, including Jamie Barton, Ryan Bancroft and Samantha Ege making their Barbican debuts. We are also pleased to welcome back international ensembles, such as Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Wynton Marsalis, in a special concert celebrating Wynton’s 60th birthday, and L’Arpeggiata directed by Christina Pluhar performing Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers. And of course we are delighted that there will be fantastic projects and collaborations featuring our great family of orchestras and ensembles including our resident London Symphony Orchestra who will give 18 concerts this autumn, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting throughout September and December; our associate BBC Symphony Orchestra giving the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s multimedia tribute to his beloved Arsenal with Up for Grabs; our associates Academy of Ancient Music performing Haydn’s The Creation with new Music Director Laurence Cummings and Britten Sinfonia presenting Sebastião Salgado: Amazônia in concert. EFG London Jazz Festival from our associate producer Serious returns and we will again host Darbar Festival of Indian Classical Music. We will also continue to bring some of the concerts to a wider, global audience, through our livestreams, including Clark and the London Contemporary Orchestra performing orchestral versions of Playground In A Lake and Speakers Corner Quartet bringing their unique blend of jazz and electronics in a new project.

The Barbican’s music programme in September – December 2021 includes:

ORCHESTRAL HIGHLIGHTS

• Music Director Sir Simon Rattle opens the Barbican Resident London Symphony Orchestra’s season with an all-British programme featuring a new choral work by Julian Anderson and music by Judith Weir, Vaughan Williams and Maxwell Davies (12 Sep, Barbican Hall). Sir Simon Rattle will also conduct all of the LSO’s Barbican concerts in Sep and Dec 2021.  
• Barbican Associate Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo perform the UK premiere of Betsy Jolas’s Letters from Bachville,  Brahms’s Symphony No 2, and Ruth Gipps’s Horn Concerto with soloist Ben Goldscheider (2 Oct, Barbican Hall, also livestreamed). The orchestra will be joined by children’s author Dame Jacqueline Wilson reading from her hugely popular books in a multimedia orchestral adventure for families (23 Oct).
• Up for Grabs - Life-long Arsenal fan Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new composition sets video footage of Arsenal’s 1989 title-winning match vs Liverpool to a new symphonic score. Ryan Bancroft conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in this world premiere, and Turnage joins Arsenal legend Lee Dixon and other players from that night to discuss the match and its cultural impact. (5 Nov, also livestreamed)
• Saxophonist Soweto Kinch joins the London Symphony Orchestra as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival presenting an LSO commissioned piece written by Kinch as a response to Black Lives Matter and the history of the Black community in London (19 Nov, also livestreamed)
• Barbican Associate Ensemble Academy of Ancient Music performs Haydn’s The Creation in Laurence Cummings’ inaugural concert as Music Director of AAM, featuring stunning digital effects by Nina Dunn (28 Sep, Barbican Hall, also livestreamed)
• In Sebastião Salgado: Amazônia in concert, Simone Menezes conducts Barbican Associate Ensemble Britten Sinfonia in music by Philip Glass and Heitor Villa-Lobos with projections of Sebastião Salgado’s evocative, thought-provoking photography, introduced by the celebrated photographer himself (14 Oct, Barbican Hall). Trumpeter Alison Balsom joins the orchestra in a concert exploring the enduring musical influence of the American Jazz Age (18 Nov, Milton Court)

RECITALS

• GRAMMY award-winning violinist Nicola Benedetti opens the recital series with unaccompanied music for violin, featuring works by Bach, Ysaÿe and Wynton Marsalis (23 Sep, Barbican Hall)
• Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato returns to the Barbican with In My Solitude – an intimate recital with pianist Craig Terry exploring themes of solitude and love (26 Oct, Barbican Hall)
• Acclaimed musicologist-pianist Samantha Ege presents Fantasie Nègre, a recital celebrating the work of three extraordinary female composers of the 20th century: Florence Price, Margaret Bonds and Vítězslava Kaprálová (24 Nov, Milton Court)
• Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton makes her Barbican recital debut alongside pianist and composer Jake Heggie featuring songs by Schubert, Brahms, Florence Price and Jake Heggie himself (5 Dec, Barbican Hall)
• Tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Jonathan Biss perform the original twenty-song version of Robert Schumann’s song cycle: Dichterliebe (29 Nov, Milton Court)
• Global superstar pianist Lang Lang plays Bach’s Goldberg Variations (10 Dec), and piano virtuoso Khatia Buniatishvili presents music by Bach, Liszt, Brahms, Chopin and Prokofiev (20 Oct) in the Barbican Hall; and Barbican ECHO Rising Stars nominee, horn player Ben Goldscheider performs a new work by Mark Simpson, and Jane Vignery’s Horn Sonata (24 Sep, LSO St Luke’s)

SPECIAL PROJECTS & RESIDENCIES

• Bass-baritone Davóne Tines arrives at the Barbican in October for a short residency that includes:
  • a concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (7 Oct), featuring Tines’ creation Concerto No. 1: SERMON about which he says: "The meaning this sermon illustrates is an interrogation of why marginalized peoples, namely black people, are made to continually prove their humanity, and asks audiences to evaluate their own connection to this persistent ethical dilemma."
  • a recital at Milton Court, entitled Recital No.1: MASS (12 Oct)
  • a public conversation with Guildhall School musicians (8 Oct)
• Shostakovich: Life, Letters and Friendship presented by Carducci Quartet (9 Nov, Milton Court)
• Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras performing all six of Bach’s solo cello suites, each paired with responses from contemporary composers across three concerts in one afternoon (14 Nov, Milton Court)
• The newly launched James McVinnie Ensemble presents a programme featuring Philip Glass’s Glassworks and Music in 5ths as well as a selection from Chris P. Thompson’s True Stories & Rational Numbers. (23 Nov, Barbican Hall, also livestreamed)

INTERNATIONAL ENSEMBLES

• Barbican International Associate Ensemble Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis celebrate Wynton at 60 (26 Sep, Barbican Hall)
• Christina Pluhar leads European group L’Arpeggiata in Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers (14 Dec, Barbican Hall, also livestreamed)

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS

• Balimaya Project + Colectiva – a double bill of Jazz, West African and Latin music (2 Oct, Milton Court)
• Clark and the London Contemporary Orchestra perform orchestral versions of Playground In A Lake (16 Oct, Barbican Hall, also livestreamed)
• Blending jazz and electronics, Speakers Corner Quartet featuring Kwake Bass present their new project Further Out Than The Edge alongside very special guests. (19 Oct, Barbican Hall, also livestreamed)
• Electronic/techno producer, musician and visual artist Christian Löffler makes his Barbican debut with a new immersive A/V performance (6 Nov, Barbican Hall)
• East London producer, pianist and bandleader Alfa Mist presents new material from his fourth solo album Bring Backs (4 Dec, Barbican Hall)

FESTIVALS

• Darbar Festival of Indian classical music, showcasing one of the oldest continual musical traditions in the world that dates back thousands of years (21 – 24 Oct) featuring: Ken Zuckerman with Surdarshan Chana + Jyotsna Srikanth with Sanju Sahai & RN Prakash (21 Oct), Sukhvinder Singh with Milind Kulkarni + Roopa Panesar with Shahbaz Hussain (22 Oct), Yogabliss to Live Music (23 & 24 Oct), Ustad Waseem Ahmed Khan with Gurdain Rayatt & Milind Kulkarni (23 Oct), Kaushiki Chakraborty with Shahbaz Hussain & Milind Kulkarni + Pandit Kushal Das with Sukhvinder Singh (24 Oct)
• EFG London Jazz Festival (12 – 21 Nov) featuring: Archie Shepp & Jason Moran (12 Nov), Aynur (14 Nov), Marcel Khalifé & Bachar Mar-Khalifé (15 Nov), Avishai Cohen + Nikki Yeoh (16 Nov), LSO/Soweto Kinch (19 Nov, also livestreamed), Charles Lloyd (20 Nov) and Brad Mehldau (21 Nov)
• Raymond Gubbay Christmas Festival (18 Dec 2021 – 1 Jan 2022) including: Christmas Carol Singalong (18 Dec), Carols By Candlelight (19 Dec), King’s College Choir (21 Dec), Grand Christmas Classics With Alan Titchmarsh (22 Dec), Jingle Bell Christmas (23 Dec), The Music Of Zimmer Vs Williams (27 Dec), Beethoven’s Ninth (28 Dec), The Greatest Showtunes (29 Dec), The Best Of John Williams (30 Dec), New Year’s Eve Gala (31 Dec), New Year’s Day Prom (1 Jan)

OVERVIEW OF LIVESTREAMED CONCERTS

• Academy of Ancient Music: Haydn’s The Creation (Tue 28 Sep, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)
• Sakari Oramo conducts Brahms, Jolas and Gipps (Sat 2 Oct, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)
• Clark and the London Contemporary Orchestra (Sat 16 Oct, Barbican Hall, 8pm)
• Speakers Corner Quartet presents Further Out Than The Edge (Tue 19 Oct, Barbican Hall, 8pm)
• Mark-Anthony Turnage: Up for Grabs (Fri 5 Nov, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)
• London Symphony Orchestra/Soweto Kinch: The Black Peril (Fri 19 Nov, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)
• James McVinnie Ensemble: Glassworks (Tue 23 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)  
• L’Arpeggiata/Pluhar: Monteverdi’s Vespers (Tue 14 Dec, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)

Priority booking for the Barbican’s autumn music season opens for Principal and Premier Patrons on Fri 25 Jun, Patrons Mon 28 Jun, Members Plus on Thu 1 Jul, and Members on Fri 2 Jul. Public booking opens on Tue 6 Jul. Discounted tickets are available to 14 – 25-year-olds through Young Barbican.

The Barbican believes in creating space for people and ideas to connect through its international arts programme, community events and learning activity. To keep its programme accessible to everyone, and to keep investing in the artists it works with, the Barbican needs to raise more than 60% of its income through ticket sales, commercial activities and fundraising every year. Donations can be made here: barbican.org.uk/donate.

FULL CONCERT DETAILS IN DATE ORDER AND FURTHER INFORMATION ON

LSO, BBC SO, AAM and BRITTEN SINFONIA SEASONS BELOW

Nicola Benedetti in Recital
Thu 23 Sep 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm,
Tickets £15 – 45 plus booking fee

GRAMMY award-winning violinist Nicola Benedetti comes to the Barbican to perform an evening of unaccompanied music for violin. The works show the sound world of the instrument to its full potential: Benedetti pairs Bach’s Partita in D minor with the folk inspired Sonata No 5 by Ysaÿe and Wynton Marsalis’ Fiddle Dance Suite for Solo Violin which was written specially for Benedetti. The piece is in five movements and takes us on a journey through a reel, lullaby, Irish jig, strathspey and a Saturday-night-barn-dance hoedown.

Produced by the Barbican
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ECHO Rising Stars: Ben Goldscheider 
Fri 24 Sep 2021, LSO St Luke’s, 1pm
Tickets £12 plus booking fee

The ECHO Rising Stars programme (the European Concert Hall Association’s series in which a group of exceptional artists are nominated to present engaging musical programmes across Europe each year) returns to the Barbican with the centre’s own nomination for the series, horn player Ben Goldscheider. At the age of 18, Ben was a Finalist in the 2016 BBC Young Musician Competition at the Barbican, and now returns to the Hall to perform a new work by Mark Simpson, and Jane Vignery’s Horn Sonata. Ben Goldscheider will also appear in the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s season opener concert on 2 Oct.

Produced by the Barbican
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Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis: Wynton at 60
Sun 26 Sep 2021, Barbican Hall, 8pm
Tickets £25 – 50 plus booking fee

Barbican International Associate Ensemble Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis present a special evening in celebration of Wynton’s 60th birthday. The programme will feature a selection of music composed by Wynton Marsalis and by composers who have influenced him.

Produced by the Barbican
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A New Created World
Academy of Ancient Music: Haydn’s The Creation
Tue 28 Sep 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £15 – 50 plus booking fee & £12.50 (livestream)

In his inaugural concert as Music Director of Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings puts Haydn’s The Creation at the centre of a dazzling immersive vision co-produced with the Barbican. AAM celebrates a new chapter in its history with a performance of Haydn’s life-affirming work with stunning digital effects by Nina Dunn. The all-star line-up of soloists includes Mary Bevan, Rachel Redmond, Stuart Jackson, Ashley Riches and Brindley Sherratt.

AAM is grateful for the generous support of this performance from The London Community Foundation and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts, the Derek Hill Foundation, the Maria Björnson Memorial Fund, The Polonsky Foundation and other trusts.

Co-produced by the Barbican and Academy of Ancient Music
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Sakari Oramo conducts Brahms, Jolas and Gipps 
Sat 2 Oct 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £12.50 – 42 plus booking fee & £12.50 (livestream)

Chief Conductor, Sakari Oramo, opens the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s season with a programme to herald a new dawn. With Brahms’s Symphony No 2 at its heart, the programme is infused with music celebrating the joy of existence tinged with the shadows of mourning. The concert opens with the UK premiere of Betsy Jolas’s Letters from Bachville, a homage to Bach’s hometown of Leipzig, and BBC Young Musician finalist Ben Goldscheider performs Ruth Gipps’s Horn Concerto which she wrote for her son as he embarked upon his own horn playing career.

Co-produced by the Barbican and BBC SO
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Balimaya Project + Colectiva
Sat 2 Oct 2021, Milton Court Concert Hall, 7pm
Tickets £12.50 – 15 plus booking fee

Jazz, West African and Latin music collide in this exciting double-bill performance from the Balimaya Project and Colectiva.

Balimaya Project was formed in 2019 by percussionist Yahael Camara Onono, a second-generation Londoner whose rich West African musical heritage, coupled with his musical experiences in the UK, inspired him to bridge the gap between the diaspora and West Africa. Built on the foundation of forging musical and cultural ties, the band draws on Mandé material from Senegal and Mali and blends it with London jazz currents from new generation players. Onono is Balimaya Project’s lead djembe player, composer and arranger, with the rest of the group of players also utilising African instruments including the balafon, kora and talking drums. The word ‘Balimaya’ comes from the Maninka languages of West Africa and means the essence of kinship, which is important in Mandé society that revolves around extended family. Balimaya Project’s Wolo So album will be out on Jazz Re:Freshed on 30 July 2021.

Colectiva explore the spaces between Afro-Latin music and jazz while reflecting on themes of sisterhood and female empowerment. The band make space for female and non-binary identifying musicians to come together and collaborate and their fresh compositions are rooted in the sounds of Africa, Latin America and the wider diaspora.

Produced by the Barbican
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Davóne Tines Residency 
7 October 2021, Barbican Hall – BBC SO/Dalia Stasevska
8 October 2021, Milton Court Concert Hall – “In conversation”
12 October 2021, Milton Court Concert Hall – Davóne Tines: Recital No. 1: MASS

American bass-baritone Davóne Tines, acclaimed for his extraordinary vocal range and path-breaking collaborations with living composers, will arrive at the Barbican in October for a short residency that includes a concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a recital at Milton Court, and a public conversation with Guildhall School musicians.

Principal Guest Conductor Dalia Stasevska conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Davóne Tines’ creation Concerto No. 1: SERMON. The devised work for voice and orchestra weaves poetic texts by African American writers which frame and amplify arias by John Adams, Anthony Davis, Igee Dieudonné and Tines himself. The programme takes its inspiration from the oratorical tradition of an exegesis sermon in which illustrative meaning is drawn from scripture. In Davóne Tines’ own words: "The meaning this sermon illustrates is an interrogation of why marginalized peoples, namely black people, are made to continually prove their humanity, and asks audiences to evaluate their own connection to this persistent ethical dilemma."

In his Recital No. 1: MASS on 12 October, Davóne Tines has named the sections after parts of the Mass, but presents them in an order that accords with his own interpretation of a spiritual journey. Accompanied by pianist Adam Nielsen, he will explore the parts of the Mass through different musical traditions: Pulitzer Prize winning composer Caroline Shaw’s Mass setting frames the evening. Shaw’s music is combined with interspersed arias from Bach’s cantatas, songs by Margaret Bonds (one of the first Black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States and a student of Florence Price), and with traditional spirituals – some arranged by Moses Hogan, others recomposed by Tyshawn Sorey for Tines. The evening also features the Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan D’Arc by Black minimalist composer Julius Eastman, and VIGIL by Igee Dieudonné and Davóne Tines.

Davóne Tines’ residency also includes an “in conversation” event for Guildhall School musicians on 8 October which is open to the public. This event will be an opportunity to hear Tines talk about his career, commissioning and performing new works, and about his interdisciplinary activities.

Produced by the Barbican

Clark and the London Contemporary Orchestra
Sat 16 Oct 2021, Barbican Hall, 8pm
Tickets £20 – 25 plus booking fee & £12.50 (livestream)

Prolific 21st century producer, multi-instrumentalist and composer Clark performs orchestral versions of his latest record Playground In A Lake and recent soundtrack works alongside the London Contemporary Orchestra.

Playground In A Lake is his debut work after signing to Deutsche Grammophon and has been over five years in the making, slowly unearthing a new style and musical vocabulary to capture a vast notion. With this new album Clark delivers a full concept work that touches and intertwines themes of climate change and lost innocence.

Clark returns to the Barbican following his appearance at Max Richter’s and Yulia Mahr’s Sounds and Visions marathon weekend in May 2018, providing the live soundtrack to a screening of Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man.  

Produced by the Barbican
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Speakers Corner Quartet presents Further Out Than The Edge
Tue 19 Oct 2021, Barbican Hall, 8pm
Tickets £15 – 20 plus booking fee & £12.50 (livestream)
Blending jazz and electronics, Speakers Corner Quartet showcase their new project, alongside very special guests.

The Quartet started as the house band at the open-mic night Speakers’ Corner in Brixton, London. A story fifteen years in the making, the band return for their first live show in almost a decade.
The Quartet itself comprises of Biscuit, Kwake Bass, Peter Bennie, and Raven Bush. However, the night will feature a long list of the band's friends and family alongside surprise special guests – to be announced – exclusively performing brand-new material which will be heard for the first time as part of an extended set at the Barbican this autumn.

Produced by the Barbican
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Khatia Buniatishvili in Recital
Wed 20 Oct 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £15 – 50 plus booking fee
The Georgian-born France-based piano virtuoso Khatia Buniatishvili, renowned for her refined technique and blazing musicianship, returns to the Barbican for a solo recital on the instrument that she has called ‘a symbol of musical solitude’. Her programme begins with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor, followed by music from Liszt, Brahms, Chopin and Prokofiev.

Produced by the Barbican
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Darbar Festival 2021
Thu 21 – Sun 24 October 2021, various venues 
Tickets £15 – 100 plus booking fee

Founded in memory of Gurmit Singh Ji Virdee, an inspirational tabla player and teacher, Darbar Festival is now in its sixteenth year and returns to the Barbican following a digital edition in 2020, with more ground-breaking concerts and performances featuring world class legends, maestros and maestras and the very best of UK talent.

The classical music of India is among the oldest continual musical traditions in the world, and dates back thousands of years. Darbar Festival is founded on the belief that everyone should have the chance to experience live performances of this life-changing art form. The 2021 Festival line-up at the Barbican includes:

• Ken Zuckerman with Surdarshan Chana + Jyotsna Srikanth with Sanju Sahai & RN Prakash (Thu 21 Oct, Milton Court Concert Hall, 6.30pm)
• Sukhvinder Singh with Milind Kulkarni + Roopa Panesar wth Shahbaz Hussain (Fri 22 Oct, Milton Court Concert Hall, 6.30pm)
• Yogabliss to Live Music (Sat 23 & Sun 24 Oct, Frobisher Room, 10.30am)
• Ustad Waseem Ahmed Khan with Gurdain Rayatt & Milind Kulkarni (Sat 23 Oct, Milton Court Concert Hall, 6.30pm)
• Kaushiki Chakraborty with Shahbaz Hussain & Milind Kulkarni + Pandit Kushal Das with Sukhvinder Singh (Sun 24 Oct, Barbican Hall, 5.30pm)

Produced by Darbar Arts Culture and Heritage Trust (Darbar) in partnership with the Barbican
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Joyce DiDonato: In My Solitude
Tue 26 Oct 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm,
Tickets £15 – 65 plus booking fee

Superstar mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato returns to the Barbican with a programme exploring solitude and love. With music by Mahler, Handel, Berlioz and Duke Ellington, from which DiDonato’s programme takes its title, she presents an intimate recital with pianist Craig Terry with music that captures a view of the world from behind closed doors.

Produced by the Barbican
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Mark-Anthony Turnage: Up for Grabs 
Fri 5 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £15 – 40 plus booking fee & £12.50 (livestream)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Ryan Bancroft Conductor
Maurice Ravel: Boléro
Stravinsky: Firebird Suite (1919)
Mark-Anthony Turnage: Up for Grabs

English composer and life-long Arsenal fan Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new work sets video footage of Arsenal’s 1989 title-winning match vs Liverpool to a new symphonic score. Commissioned by the Barbican, Turnage wrote the work for the BBC Symphony Orchestra who will perform the world premiere at the Barbican, conducted by Ryan Bancroft. The orchestra is joined by star-studded jazz soloists including John Parricelli (Loose Tubes) and Peter Erskine (Weather Report) to perform this musical depiction of a footballing night of unrivalled highs, lows, desperation and, ultimately, elation. The work contains musical motifs of all the players and is dedicated to the late Arsenal licon, David Rocastle. After the music, Mark-Anthony Turnage will join Arsenal legend Lee Dixon and other players from that night to discuss the match and its cultural impact.
Produced by the Barbican
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Christian Löffler
Saturday 6 November 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm 
Tickets £22.50 – 27.50 plus booking fee

German electronic/techno producer, musician and visual artist, Christian Löffler makes his Barbican debut in November 2021 (rescheduled from May 2020) with a new immersive A/V performance. Sound and visuals will be in a dynamic dialogue featuring material from his latest and fourth studio album Lys (Danish for ‘light’) alongside specially commissioned visuals by Canadian lighting designer Chris Moylan, who has been critically acclaimed for his innovative visual atmospheres.
Produced by the Barbican in association with Soundcrash 
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Shostakovich: Life, Letters and Friendship
Carducci Quartet
Tue 9 Nov 2021, Milton Court Concert Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £15 – 40 plus booking fee

Following the success of the Carducci Quartet’s performances at the Barbican Beethoven Weekender in 2020, the quartet returns to explore the letters, relationships and life of composer Dmitri Shostakovich through music and readings. Their performances of the complete Shostakovich Quartet cycle in 2016 resulted in a Royal Philharmonic Society award. Narrator to be announced.

Produced by the Barbican
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EFG London Jazz Festival 2021 at the Barbican 
12-21 November 2021
Tickets £18 – 40 plus booking fee & £12.50 (livestream)  

Following an exceptional digital edition last year, the EFG London Jazz Festival returns in November 2021 with a programme of live performances by an electrifying line-up of global stars, special collaborations, and the finest and freshest music. Events at the Barbican include:

• Archie Shepp & Jason Moran: Let My People Go (Fri 12 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)
• Aynur (Sun 14 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)
• Marcel Khalifé & Bachar Mar-Khalifé (Mon 15 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)
• Avishai Cohen + Nikki Yeoh’s Café Oran (Tue 16 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)
• London Symphony Orchestra/Soweto Kinch: The Black Peril (Fri 19 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm, livestreamed)
• Charles Lloyd (Sat 20 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)  
• Brad Mehldau (Sun 21 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm)

Presented by Barbican Associate Producer Serious 
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Bach: Six Suites, Six Echoes
Jean-Guihen Queyras  
Sun 14 Nov 2021, Milton Court Concert Hall, 2pm
Tickets £15 – 40 plus booking fee

Following a performance of two of Bach’s cello suites in 2018, renowned cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras returns to the Barbican’s programme with a new project: across three concerts in one afternoon, he performs all six of Bach’s solo cello suites, each paired with responses from contemporary composers including Ivan Fedele, Jonathan Harvey, György Kurtág, Gilbert Amy, Misato Mochizuki and Ichiro Nodaira.

Produced by the Barbican
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James McVinnie Ensemble: Glassworks
Tue 23 Nov 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £15 – 40 plus booking fee & £12.50 (livestream)

Organist James McVinnie returns to the Barbican’s music programme this autumn, with his newly launched James McVinnie Ensemble. The programme features Philip Glass’s Glassworks and Music in 5ths as well as a selection from New York-based composer, pianist and percussionist Chris P. Thompson’s True Stories & Rational Numbers. This is Thompson’s large-scale exploration of piano music in just intonation, the tuning system based on tuning notes to simple mathematical ratios of the natural harmonic series.

Produced by the Barbican
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Fantasie Nègre: The Piano Music of Florence Price
Samantha Ege
Wed 24 Nov 2021, Milton Court Concert Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £15 – 35 plus booking fee

Acclaimed musicologist-pianist Samantha Ege makes her Barbican debut following the release of her album Fantasie Nègre earlier this year. In this Milton Court recital, Ege celebrates the work of three extraordinary female composers of the 20th century. She combines the virtuosic Fantasie Nègre by pioneering African American composer Florence Price with the Spiritual Suite by Price’s student, composer and activist Margaret Bonds, and Sonata Appassionata by modernist Czech composer Vítězslava Kaprálová. Through Price’s work, which blends African American folksongs with German Romanticism, and Bonds’ suite, which combines spirituals and blues with Romanticism and Impressionism, Ege also explores two composers whose fortitude allowed them to imagine a space for themselves in the classical realm as Black women – while the combined racism and sexism of their society deemed this improbable, if not impossible.

Produced by the Barbican
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Padmore & Biss: Dichterliebe
Mon 29 Nov 2021, Milton Court Concert Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £15 – 40 plus booking fee

The formidable duo of British tenor Mark Padmore and American pianist Jonathan Biss return to Milton Court Concert Hall in 2021 to perform the original twenty-song version of Robert Schumann’s song cycle on love and loss: Dichterliebe.

Produced by the Barbican
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Alfa Mist  
Sat 4 Dec 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £17.50 – 22.50 plus booking fee

East London producer, pianist, bandleader and one of the key players in the UK’s young and vibrant jazz reformation scene, Alfa Mist makes his Barbican debut this December alongside his band. He will be presenting new material from his fourth solo album Bring Backs, which reveals a detailed exploration of his upbringing in musical form.

Produced by the Barbican
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Jamie Barton in Recital with Jake Heggie
Sun 5 Dec 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £15 – 40 plus booking fee

Critically acclaimed by virtually every major outlet covering classical music, American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton makes her Barbican recital debut on 5 December. She will perform together with her close collaborator, composer and pianist Jake Heggie, renowned for his celebrated opera Dead Man Walking that featured in the Barbican’s programme in 2018. The recital features songs by Schubert, Purcell, Brahms, Florence Price and Jake Heggie himself, and is certain to showcase the exceptional range of Jamie Barton’s voice. In recognition of her iconic performance at the Last Night of the Proms, Barton was named 2020 Personality of the Year at the BBC Music Magazine Awards. She is increasingly recognised for her impact on and off stage, and has just received the Readers' Choice Award at the 2021 International Opera Awards in London.

Produced by the Barbican
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Lang Lang plays the Goldberg Variations
Fri 10 Dec 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £25 – 85 plus booking fee

Global superstar pianist Lang Lang comes to the Barbican with one of the most iconic works in music: Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

Produced by the Barbican
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L’Arpeggiata/Pluhar: Monteverdi’s Vespers
Tue 14 Dec 2021, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £15 – 55 plus booking fee & £12.50 (livestream)

The Barbican welcomes back its first classical international ensemble since March 2020 as Christina Pluhar leads her European group L’Arpeggiata in the Barbican Hall. Leading the ensemble from the theorbo amongst other instruments, Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata will perform 17th century composer Claudio Monteverdi’s masterpiece Vespers – a milestone liturgical work which combined old with new and signalled the rapidly approaching Baroque style on its publication.  

Produced by the Barbican
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Raymond Gubbay Christmas Festival
Sat 18 Dec 2021 – Sat 1 Jan 2022, Barbican Hall, Various times
Tickets £16.50-54 plus booking fee

The Raymond Gubbay Christmas Festival returns to the Barbican in 2021 with an array of opportunities to get into the festive spirit. Carols in a candle lit style setting, show tunes and film music, classical favourites and some very special guests, including Alan Titchmarsh and Mark Williams, define this year’s family-favourite festival.

Produced by Raymond Gubbay  

BARBICAN RESIDENT AND ASSOCIATE ORCHESTRAS AND ENSEMBLES

LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Sir Simon Rattle will conduct all LSO Barbican concerts in September and in December 2021. He opens the Season on Sunday 12 September with an all-British programme featuring a new choral work by Julian Anderson, Judith Weir’s Natural History with guest soprano Lucy Crowe, followed by Vaughan Williams’s A Pastoral Symphony No 3 and Maxwell Davies’s An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise. 

For his second concert, he conducts the UK premiere of Ondřej Adámek’s song cycle ‘Where are You? featuring mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená. Adámek’s song cycle is paired in the programme with Beethoven’s Symphony No 6 Pastoral Op 68.

October concerts see Sir Simon exploring Bruckner’s Symphony No 4 and opening the Artist Portrait series of concerts featuring violist Antoine Tamestit, a double-bill featuring Martinů’s Rhapsody and Shostakovich Symphony No 1.

The Orchestra continues to present a range of full length, and shorter concerts with the return of the popular 6.30pm Half Six Fix concerts of a single work presented in a more informal framework. The LSO’s Music Director conducts two such concerts in December including Mahler’s Symphony No 4 with soprano Lucy Crowe and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. For full evening concerts, the Bartók is presented with Rózsa’s Violin Concerto with Roman Simovic as guest soloist and for the final pre-Christmas programme Mahler 4 is preceded by Debussy’s Music for King Lear and Berlioz’s Overture: King Lear.

As mentioned above, a highlight of the LSO’s autumn 2021 programme is the first performance of an LSO commission by Soweto Kinch. This concert is part of the EFG London Jazz Festival and saxophonist Soweto Kinch joins the LSO on stage. The piece was composed as a response to Black Lives Matter and the history of the Black community in London.

This autumn LSO also welcomes back to the Barbican the LSO Principal Guest Conductors Gianandrea Noseda, and François-Xavier Roth, along with some familiar guest conductors and soloists including Daniel Harding, Andris Nelsons, Nicola Benedetti, Bertrand Chamayou, Håkan Hardenberger, Janine Jansen and Martin Fröst. Programmes will cover all tastes from the iconic romantic composers to some of the great jazz composers of today.  https://lso.co.uk/

BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Barbican associate orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, will present two livestreamed concerts this season, as mentioned above: Their season opener on 2 Oct sees the orchestra and Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo perform Brahms’s Symphony No 2, the UK premiere of Betsy Jolas’s Letters from Bachville and Ruth Gipps’s Horn Concerto with soloist Ben Goldscheider. In their second livestreamed performance on 5 Nov, the orchestra will present the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Up for Grabs, setting video footage of Arsenal’s 1989 title-winning match vs Liverpool to a new symphonic score conducted by Ryan Bancroft and featuring jazz soloists including John Parricelli and Peter Erskine.

As mentioned earlier, the BBC SO also forms part of Davóne Tines residency. On 7 Oct Principal Guest Conductor, Dalia Stasevska, brings to life Davóne Tines’s exploration of racial justice in words and music that he has brought together in his ‘devised concerto’.

In recent years the BBC SO has built a reputation for presenting the work of acclaimed writers in an orchestral setting. Following in the footsteps of authors such as Armistead Maupin and Neil Gaiman, best-selling children’s author Dame Jacqueline Wilson reads from her hugely popular books in a multimedia orchestral adventure conducted by Mei-Ann Chen. This family concert will explore music by composers past and present whilst Wilson brings to life some of her favourite characters – the fearless Tracy Beaker, the determined Hetty Feather and many more (23 Oct).

Other highlights from the BBC SO include two further concerts under Sakari Oramo. The first showcases Dora Pejačević Symphony in F sharp minor, a forgotten masterpiece by the Croatian composer, teamed with Beethoven’s Egmont overture and Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto performed by Vilde Frang (26 Nov), the second sees the BBC Symphony Chorus join the BBC SO for their first Barbican concert in 20 months for a feast of English and Czech music including Dvořák’s joyous Te Deum, Tippett’s Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli and Gerald Finzi’s In Terra Pax. (3 Dec). https://www.bbc.co.uk/symphonyorchestra

ACADEMY OF ANCIENT MUSIC

Barbican Associate Ensemble Academy of Ancient Music voyages to New Worlds in 2021-22, beginning with a live-streamed season opener (A New Created World) on Tues 28 Sept 2021. New Music Director Laurence Cummings leads the ensemble in his inaugural concert in a performance of Haydn’s The Creation (see further details above).

Their next concert – The Enchanted Forest – conjures a fantastic landscape at Milton Court on Thurs 28 Oct 2021: Handel weaves spells, Rameau dances with gods, and Francesco Geminiani creates an enchanted forest on this magical history tour with outstanding narrator Josette Simon OBE, Laurence Cummings and Academy of Ancient Music. Welcome to baroque theatre – where storylines were fantastic, effects were spectacular and composers were conjurors, summoning entire supernatural worlds. An evening of words and truly enchanted music.

And then on Thurs 25 Nov 2021, AAM travels to South America, tracing the 18th century journey from Rome to Peru taken by Domenico Zipoli: priest, traveller and composer extraordinaire. Zipoli began his career as a student of Scarlatti in Rome, and ended it as one of the most striking European voices in the music of South America. Today, Laurence Cummings and AAM uncover his legacy and his world, in company with a group of singers who’ve become a byword for sonic adventure, VOCES8. Zipoli’s own rich and expressive sacred music takes its place alongside the works that inspired him: music by Palestrina, Pasquini, Scarlatti and Gabrieli, as well as the indigenous voices of South America itself. https://www.aam.co.uk/

BRITTEN SINFONIA

Barbican Associate Ensemble Britten Sinfonia presents three contrasting concerts in the autumn featuring music that evokes a strong sense of place and time, from the Amazon to Jazz Age America, and a poignant seasonal performance of Handel’s Messiah.

Celebrated photographer Sebastião Salgado travelled the Brazilian Amazon for six years capturing the beauty and fragility of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems in striking black and white images.  In Sebastião Salgado: Amazônia in concert, Simone Menezes conducts Britten Sinfonia in music by Philip Glass and Heitor Villa-Lobos with projections of Salgado’s evocative, thought-provoking photography, introduced by the photographer himself (14 Oct, Barbican Hall).

Britten Sinfonia joins forces with trumpeter Alison Balsom in a concert harnessing the power and legacy of Miles Davis and the enduring musical influence of the Jazz Age. Gill Evans’ Sketches of Spain, an arrangement of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, is punctuated by jazz-inspired works of the 20th century capturing the spirit of downtown New York, including Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Copland’s evocative Quiet City (18 Nov, Milton Court Concert Hall).  After a year without the triumphant “Hallelujah” chorus ringing out in churches and concert halls, Britten Sinfonia is joined by a star-studded line up of soloists, conductor David Watkin and the Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge for an intimate, impassioned performance of Handel’s Messiah (17 Dec, Barbican Hall).  www.brittensinfonia.com