A new orchestra that focuses on supporting musicians at the start of their careers has launched in London, with a rousing performance at Battersea Arts Centre on 8 October.
The Chromatica Orchestra is dedicated to emerging musicians, giving them opportunities to perform on stage and work with conductors who are also early on in their careers. The orchestra also works with school-age musicians, inviting them to perform side-by-side with Chromatica on stage in professional concerts.
For its debut concert, Chromatica gave a rousing performance of Copland’s stunning Fanfare for the Common Man, followed by Barber’s elegiac Violin Concerto with star violinist Kristīne Balanas and Manuel de Falla’s flamenco-inspired El amor brujo with mezzo-soprano Hanna Hipp.
Critics were quick to praise the orchestra’s “impressive range of emotional and technical abilities” and its focus on education work, which saw secondary school pupils from London’s Bobby Moore Academy join the orchestra on stage for Elgar’s Nursery Suite and Saint-Saëns’ Aquarium from The Carnival of the Animals.
The rest of the orchestra’s season includes events ranging from a family performance of Carnival of the Animals to a concert combining recorded birdsong with orchestra, and collaborations with Ben Goldscheider, Robin Tritschler, and Valeriy Sokolov, among others.
The next performance will be an Armistice Day tribute in the stunning acoustics of Southwark Cathedral, with music and readings by Booker Prize-winning poet and novelist Sir Ben Okri (11 November 2024).
The performance will provide space for reflection and remind us of humankind’s extraordinary capacity to create works of art even in the darkest times.
Book tickets at https://www.chromaticaorchestra.com/concerts/music-readings-armistice-day/
