Visionary composer **Alexander Scriabin** began his break with all musical conventions at least a decade before the advances of Stravinsky. He wrote very few orchestral works, but they included these two massive one-movement symphonies. **Poem of Ecstasy** was much loved by Henry Miller, who said that the work put him in a trance, as “...like a bath of ice, cocaine and rainbows.”

**Poem of Fire** is dedicated to Prometheus, god of fire and creator of the mortal world. Its mystical rhythms, played by an orchestra of 85 musicians, suggest the presence of the human dancing to the rhythms of the cosmos. Scriabin incorporated a ‘keyboard for lights’ to bathe the performance space in a vast interplay of coloured lights together with the strikingly original, supercharged sound world of the music. The piece is rarely performed with its lighting instructions and we will follow Scribain’s own notes to create his original vision.

The **Philharmonia Orchestra** will be conducted by **Gergely Madaras** and pianist **Samson Tsoy**, applauded for the originality and intense drama of his performances, is the soloist.

All ages.

Bold Tendencies

Scriabin: Poem of Ecstasy and Poem of Fire

Philharmonia Orchestra

Gigs

London

A percussion spectacular comes to Peckham. Inspired by music by **Tan Dun** and **Philip Glass** and including bold new music created by **The Multi-Story Orchestra** percussionists (**Delia Stephens**, **Elsa Bradley**, **Joe Richards**) and singer **Fran Lobo** with amazing young drummers from Peckham, the night will take us on a journey through the life of a volcano - from lava and surging to eruption and ash. The power of the bass drum and tom toms will be married with delicate sounds of striking water and air, and mallets dancing over marimba keys. With beats bouncing off the concrete car park walls, this celebration of all things percussion will be unmissable.

Funders Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Foyle Foundation, Arts Council England.

All ages.

The Multi-Story Orchestra — The Volcano

Multi-Story Orchestra

Raised on the North Peckham Estate in Southwark **Caleb Femi** is a poet and director. A former Young People's Laureate, his debut poetry collection, Poor, was published by Penguin and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection (2021). Poor comprises 57 poems in seven sections and we are excited to be presenting this revelatory work in its complete form for the first time. Caleb Femi will read live his ode to a troubled yet enchanted world - “rhapsodic, elegiac … reminiscent of William Blake’s visionary poetic” (Malika Booker). 

All ages.

Caleb Femi — Poor

Caleb Femi

We celebrate **Fitzcarraldo Editions** and writers **Daisy Hildyard** and **Matthew McNaught**. Hildyard will read from her brilliantly written and unsettling new book ‘Emergency’, a reinvention of the pastoral novel for the climate change era. McNaught will read from his exceptional debut ‘Immanuel’, exploring his upbringing in an evangelical Christian community in Winchester, for which he won the inaugural Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize. Blending essay, memoir and reportage, ‘Immanuel’ is about community, doubt, and the place of faith in the twenty-first century.

**Matthew McNaught** has written for the Guardian Long Reads and n+1. He lives in Southampton, where he works in mental health. He won the inaugural Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize for Immanuel, his first book.

**Daisy Hildyard**’s essay The Second Body was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2017. Her debut novel, Hunters in the Snow, came out with Jonathan Cape in 2013 and received the Somerset Maugham Award and a ‘5 under 35’ honorarium at the USA National Book Awards. She lives in York with her family.

This is an 16+ event.

Fitzcarraldo — Daisy Hildyard, Matthew McNaught 

For their biggest concert of the summer **The Multi-Story Orchestra** brings together their orchestral musicians with amazing young artists from Peckham for a celebration of baroque orchestral music. They will be performing epic string music by **Vivaldi** and beautiful songs by Italian Baroque composer **Barbara Strozzi** - a female composer from the 17th century who had more music in print than any other composer of her time but has largely been forgotten by history. This concert is dedicated to the memory of **Ro Fieldhouse**. She was an enthusiastic amateur musician and long-standing supporter of **The Multi-Story Orchestra**, who are proud to play this concert in her memory.

Funders Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Foyle Foundation, Arts Council England.

All ages.

The Multi-Story Orchestra — Our Big Summer Concert

**THE WHITE REVIEW** and **Bold Tendencies** celebrate the launch of THE WHITE REVIEW No. 33, with readings by **Fahad Al-Amoudi,** **Claire-Louise Bennett** and **Amber Husain**.

THE WHITE REVIEW No. 33 features poetry by Fahad Al-Amoudi, winner of the The White Review Poet’s Prize 2022, alongside fiction, essays, interviews and more. Copies of the publication will be available to purchase on the night.

Fahad Al-Amoudi is a poet and editor of Ethiopian and Yemeni heritage based in London. His work is published in Poetry London, bath magg, Butcher’s Dog and Magma. He is an alumnus of the Obsidian Foundation, graduate of the Writing Squad and member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen.

Claire-Louise was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and her debut book, POND, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Claire-Louise's fiction and essays have appeared in a number of publications including White Review, Stinging Fly, gorse, Harper's Magazine, Vogue Italia, Music & Literature, and New York Times Magazine. Her second novel, CHECKOUT-19 was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021.

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at AFTERALL, Central Saint Martins. Her essays and criticism appear or are forthcoming in 3AM, THE BELIEVER, LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, LA REVIEW OF BOOKS, RADICAL PHILOSOPHY and elsewhere. She is the author of REPLACE ME, which was published by Peninsula Press in November 2021.

All ages.

The White Review Summer Party

**Plínio Fernandes** is a young Brazilian classical guitarist from São Paulo, who graduated from Royal Academy of Music in 2020, and we are excited to welcome him to **Bold Tendencies** for the first time. The guitar is central to the Brazilian folk tradition and Plínio takes inspiration from a long line of great artists - Antônio Carlos Jobim, Milton Nascimento, Jacob do Bandolim, Violeta Parra, Edu Lobo, Cartola and Laurindo Almeida, some of whose music he will perform in this special programme: “I chose songs that I grew up listening to, and in many cases I fell in love with the guitar through them.” Recently signed to Decca Records, New York, his debut album Saudade will be released in 2022 and this is one of his first ever solo concerts.

John Dowland Preludium
Sir John Smith His Almain
Melancholy Galliard Fantasia 7
Fernando Sor Theme and Variations Opus 9
Heitor Villa-Lobos Five Preludes
Violeta Parra Gracias a la vida
Ary Barroso Aquarela do Brasil
Edu Lobo / Chico Buarque Beatriz
Jacob do Bandolin Assanhado

All ages.

Plínio Fernandes

Plinio Fernandes

The Endz is a powerful modern day story of friendship triumphing over heartbreak and loss - a unique tale told through spoken word, song, rap, and music. The show is an original piece created by incredible young artists from South London in collaboration with Multi-Story musicians who have been working together over the last few years. It is an authentic story of the friendship between young people in Peckham and the struggle of living in an unequal society. It celebrates our power to come through anything stronger, and to care for each other even when things are at their toughest. **Multi-Story** are bringing back The Endz this year with an even bigger cast - the original cast plus a 100-strong choir ensemble and an even bigger orchestra! First shown at **Bold Tendencies** last summer it was moving, life-changing for everyone in it and for everyone who saw it: a world-class performance piece, not to be missed. 

Director **Simone Ibbert Brown**
Music Director **Kate Whitley** 
Conductor **Christopher Stark** 
Choir Leader **Fran Lobo**

Funders Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Foyle Foundation, Arts Council England, Fitton Trust.


All ages.

The Multi-Story Orchestra — The Endz

We are excited to welcome South African cellist and rising star **Abel Selaocoe** for a special solo programme. Redefining the parameters of the cello Abel moves seamlessly across genres and styles, from collaborations with world musicians and beatboxers, to concert performances and solo recitals. He combines virtuosic performance with improvisation, singing and body percussion, and is devoted to composing works and curating programmes that highlight the links between Western and non-Western musical traditions. His debut album Where is Home? (Hae Ke Kae), on the subject of home and refuge, will be released in September 2022. Abel’s programme for **Bold Tendencies** will look at loneliness and love: how to cultivate love for yourself, how to be alone, how to be happy with very little - as Abel calls it ‘one-man medicine’. 

All ages.

Abel Selaocoe

“If this is the future of dance, we’re in safe hands” (Evening Standard). Following the success of Speak Volumes shown at **Bold Tendencies** in 2021, **National Youth Dance Company** - the flagship organisation for young dancers -will present Quartier Paradis, a large-scale new work exploring the relationship between movement, voice and music for 33 outstanding young dancers led by internationally renowned choreographer **Alesandra Seutin**. Alesandra has built a reputation for creating thought provoking, visually striking performances. She was recently appointed Artistic Director at the École des Sables in Senegal, where she trained as a student of Germaine Acogny.

NYDC has established a reputation for producing high-quality, critically acclaimed productions by leading choreographers including Botis Seva, Russell Maliphant, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sharon Eyal, Damien Jalet, Michael Keegan-Dolan, Akram Khan and Jasmin Vardimon.

NYDC is run by Sadler’s Wells and jointly funded by the Arts Council England and the Department for Education. Barclays is the Associate Partner of the National Youth Dance Company.

All ages.

National Youth Dance Company — Alesandra Seutin

National Youth Dance Company

**Sharon Eyal** is one of the most radical choreographers working today. Her unmistakable style is iconic. She returns to **Bold Tendencies** with this new programme of four performances specially planned for the concrete spaces. Celebrating Eyal’s glitching exactness and intensity of feeling it includes House, a hypnotic and wild masterwork never before seen in the UK. Known for propulsive performances that fuse classical dance with underground club culture, Sharon Eyal seizes darkness with intention. Punctuating her sharp and brutal choreography with vulnerability and emotional depth, Eyal harnesses the human body to assume a grave beauty, capturing the raw condition of human expression.

All ages.

Sharon Eyal and L-E-V — Dark in the House

Every year **The Multi-Story Orchestra** does one performance that takes place all around the car park space. This is a chance to experience the orchestra up close - musicians perform throughout the top four levels and the audience can wander around freely. The night leads to all the musicians coming together for an uplifting orchestral performance. The Multi-Story Orchestra have created their own new music especially for this event, called Awake!. Bringing together their incredible young people and musicians to celebrate a journey of self-searching and discovery, it will be big, thrilling, and unexpected! 

Funders Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Foyle Foundation, Southwark Music Service.

All ages.

The Multi-Story Orchestra — Awake!

Every year **The Multi-Story Orchestra** does one performance that takes place all around the car park space. This is a chance to experience the orchestra up close - musicians perform throughout the top four levels and the audience can wander around freely. The night leads to all the musicians coming together for an uplifting orchestral performance. The Multi-Story Orchestra have created their own new music especially for this event, called Awake!. Bringing together their incredible young people and musicians to celebrate a journey of self-searching and discovery, it will be big, thrilling, and unexpected! 

Funders Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Foyle Foundation, Southwark Music Service.

All ages.

**Pavel Kolesnikov** and **Samson Tsoy** live together, and alongside flourishing solo careers perform as a duo. Both multiple prize-winners, we are excited that they are joining us again to perform together on two pianos - music for four hands. The programme, specially considered for the concrete spaces in high summer, includes the jubilant music of **Prokofiev** Cinderella Suite - originally written as a ballet - and **Rachmaninov** Suite for Two Pianos, a sumptuous fantasy suite with dazzling depictions of expressive and introspective worlds demanding staggering virtuosity from both players.

All ages.

Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy

Pavel Kolesnikov

**James McVinnie**’s Ensemble of virtuoso keyboardists present seven spectacular works by contemporary American composers written across the last 50 years, performed on pianos and electronics.

**Julius Eastman** wrote Gay Guerrilla in 1979, ten years after Stonewall riots and on the cusp of the AIDS epidemic. **Marcos Balter**’s Dreamcatcher reflects on the family separation crisis created by the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy at the US border. **inti figgis-vizueta** writes through the lens of personal identities, braiding a childhood of overlapping immigrant communities and Black-founded Freedom schools with Andean and Irish heritage and a deep connection to the land, whilst works by acclaimed composers **Christopher Cerrone** and **Nico Muhly** and the legendary **Meredith Monk** enclose us into the noise, structure and feelings of the modern city.

We are excited to welcome **James McVinnie**, **Eliza McCarthy**, **Siwan Rhys** and **Hugh Rowlands** to perform this special programme.

All ages

James McVinnie Ensemble

James McVinnie

**Górecki** dedicated this Symphony to his wife Jadwiga Rurańska. This major work, written in 1976, is an evocation of the ties between mother and child. A solo soprano sings Polish texts in each of the three movements. 
The first is a 15th-century Polish lament of Mary, mother of Jesus, the second a message written on the wall of a Gestapo cell during World War II, and the third a Silesian folk song of a mother searching for her son lost in the Silesian uprisings. The dominant themes of the Symphony are motherhood, despair and suffering and it is an unforgettable experience to hear it live. 
**The Philharmonia Orchestra** will be conducted by **Rory Macdonald** and we are excited to welcome award-winning soprano **Ella Taylor** as soloist.

All ages.

Górecki: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

Known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music, influential German composer **Karlheinz Stockhausen**’s masterpiece KONTAKTE from 1958–60 uses incredibly detailed spectral analysis of acoustic sound sources (metal, skin, and wood) to shape electronic sounds. The work also combines directional recorded sound with live performers so the sounds are passed around and across the audience in an elaborate and dramatic use of acoustic space. 
 
Similarly **Aphex Twin**’s Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt.2 features acoustic sounds - prepared piano, drums, and wood and metal percussion, controlled electronically. The 13 tracks that make up the album will be performed in a new live version in the unique spatial and acoustic conditions of the former car park spaces. 
 
**GBSR Duo** is **George Barton** (percussion) and **Siwan Rhys** (piano), two of the UK's finest young contemporary chamber musicians. They will be joined by percussionist **Sam Wilson** and pianist **Joseph Havlat** and sound engineers **Sound Intermedia**.

All ages.

Stockhausen, Aphex Twin — Gbsr Duo

GBSR Duo

**Sheku Kanneh-Mason** is returning with a new programme devised specially for **Bold Tendencies**. He will perform with **Harry Baker**, an award-winning improvising pianist and composer in jazz, classical and new-music as well as four fellow cellists (**Hadewych van Gent**, **Max Ruisi**, **Ashok Klouda**, **Desmond Neysmith**) and English-Moroccan singer songwriter **Zak Abel**. The programme will open with the shattering harmonies and soaring melody of **Bach**’s Komm, süßer Tod (Come, sweet death…) written in 1736 for the German composer’s celebrated book of 69 Sacred Songs and Arias, presented here in a new arrangement by Sheku for five cellos. It will close with the **Nile Rogers** hit Good Times, a utopian disco celebration from 1979 — for Chic, disco was more than a beat — it was “a new state of mind.”

Bach Komm, süsser Tod arr. Sheku Kanneh-Mason for 5 cellos 
Villa Lobos Bachianas Brasilieras no 1 Preludio (Modinha) for 5 cellos
Gwylim Simcock Prayer For The Senses perf. Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Edmund Finnis 5 Preludes perf. Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Star of County Down perf. Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Harry Baker Fair Thee Well My Dear for cello and piano perf. Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Harry Baker 
Myfanwy
Zak Abel/Sheku Kanneh-Mason Same Boat perf. Zak Abel and cello ensemble
Bacharach Say A Little Prayer perf. Zak Abel, Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Harry Baker
Nile Rogers Good Times perf. The Whole Ensemble

All ages.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason

**Shostakovich** wrote much music for children, but nothing more delightful than this miniature cartoon-opera, intended for children between the ages of 4 and 10 with its cast of mouse, cat, duck, horse, pig, toad, dog and fish. Award-winning Director **Polly Graham** and her company **Loud Crowd** will produce the piece.
We would love to hear from children and young people who would like the  opportunity to participate in the performances, as well as exploring the singing, dance, music and mask-making aspects of the production process as the opera is rehearsed and prepared on-site. Performance timings will be announced in due course. 

All ages.

Polly Graham & Loud Crowd — The Silly Little Mouse

workshop

Workshop

This towering epic is one of the greatest works in the piano repertoire and notoriously difficult to play. It burns and sparkles with yearning, bittersweet intensity.

**Rachmaninov** dedicated the concerto to Dr Nikolai Dahl, a neurologist and musician who enabled him to rebuild himself after his breakdown and begin to compose again. The music notably features throughout David Lean’s film Brief Encounter.

The **Philharmonia Orchestra** will be conducted by celebrated young American conductor **Roderick Cox**, joining us specially for this final concert of the season. Twenty year old pianist **Jeneba Kanneh-Mason**, applauded for her performance of the work of Florence Price at the Proms last year, is the soloist.

All ages.

Bold Tendencies

Upcoming events