sun 26/10/2025

Kings Place

From Historical to Hip-Hop, Classically Black Music Festival, Kings Place review - a cluster of impressive stars for the future

To hear Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason speaking live is to hear a woman who very much recognises that her lifelong mission to challenge the perception of who should play classical music is ongoing. Though she has given birth to seven children who have gone on...

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Two-Piano Gala, Kings Place review - shining constellations

Never mind the permutations (anything up to eight hands on the two pianos); feel the unwavering quality of the eight pianists and the 13 works, each perfect in their proper place across two and a half hours of more or less continuous music. Above...

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Goldscheider, Brother Tree Sound, Kings Place review - music of hope from a young composer

Last night’s concert at Kings Place was a programme of contemporary pieces – including several premieres – by horn superstar Ben Goldscheider and string quartet Brother Tree Sound, “curated”, as the current lingo has it, by young composer Ben Nobuto...

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Songlines Encounters, Kings Place review - West African and Anatolian magic

Songlines Encounters is your round-the-world ticket to great world music and performances, a chance to travel widely in music and culture without the burden of check-ins, passport control, flight delays, or transfers. All you need do is get to...

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Attacca Quartet, Kings Place review - bridging the centuries in sound

Memorably described by Gramophone magazine as the “new kids on the classical block…with lavish pocket money”, Apple’s London-based label Platoon is busy cementing its street cred with an ongoing concert series at Kings Place.If BIS (bought by Apple...

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Josienne Clarke, Across the Evening Sky, Kings Place review - celebrating Sandy Denny

On the first date of a 17-concert tour that had its preview at Celtic Connections in January, Across the Evening Sky begins with the liminal, predatory dangers of associating in any way with the sly “Reynardine”, with Matt Robinson on piano and...

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BBC Singers, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Kings Place review - on the way to heaven via King's Cross

Just now, music about survival, transcendence and the afterlife may have a special resonance for the BBC Singers. After all, the supremely versatile century-old chamber choir has endured its own near-death experience – at the hands of the BBC top...

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Sun Rings, Sacconi Quartet, Festival Voices, Kings Place review - lift-off for an exhilarating voyage into the unknown

What better way to start a season about the Earth than by looking back on it from an astronaut’s perspective? At a time when the activities of assorted billionaires and emerging superpowers are making the space race topical again, it feels more than...

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Songs We Carry, Ana Silvera and Saied Silbak, Kings Place review - harmony between Arab and Jew

As the Middle East continues to fragment in hate and horror, a tragic unfolding of events with roots reaching back to the middle of the last century, any sign of love and deeply felt collaboration provides a welcome beacon, and signals the...

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Elmore String Quartet, Kings Place review - impressive playing from an emerging group

The young Elmore String Quartet, recent graduates of the Royal Northern College, made an impressive Kings Place debut last night with a programme that put music written by composers at a similarly early stage in their careers alongside another’s...

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SANSARA, The Waiting Sky: A Christmas Meditation, Kings Place review - a thrillingly mysterious and profound Christmas alternative

What a beautiful, alternative evening of Christmas music this was, ranging in tone from bleakness to transcendence – a thrilling escape from the season’s cloying commercialism to a sense of something both mysterious and profound. Powerful new...

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Aurora Orchestra, Kings Place review - experimental work in an immersive setting

The Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottír found her work put under a strangely unforgiving lens when it was featured in Tár, the now infamous Todd Field film made in 2022 starring Cate Blanchett as a tempestuously exacting female conductor. In a...

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