Chineke! Orchestra’s final streamed behind-closed-doors concert of the year, recorded at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.
The evening opens with Haydn’s virtuosic Trumpet Concerto, featuring Chineke!’s Principal Trumpet Aaron Akugbo as soloist.
Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed by African American composer Adolphus Hailstork is an elegiac tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This is Chineke!’s first performance of a piece from Hailstork’s impressive body of work, which blends music of African American and European traditions.
The concert closes with Dvorak’s cheerful, optimistic piece in G major, Symphony no.8, a work composed upon his election to the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts and inspired by the folk melodies of his native Bohemia.
We are delighted to be joined by Kalena Bovell making her UK conducting debut with the Chineke! Orchestra. Bovell is the only female conductor of African-American/Hispanic heritage working in the United States.
Performers
Chineke! Orchestra
Kalena Bovell, conductor
Aaron Akugbo, soloist
Repertoire
Coleridge-Taylor, Ballade for Orchestra, Op.33
Haydn Trumpet Concerto in E Flat
Hailstork, Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed
Dvorak Symphony No 8 in G