Southbank Sinfonia Announces Spring/Summer Season at St John's Smith Square

Southbank Sinfonia at St John’s Smith Square have announced their Spring/Summer 2024 season, with highlights including one-off event concerts, as well as a series of exciting concerts by its own orchestra, Southbank Sinfonia. Featuring an array of artistic talent, audiences can enjoy everything from enthralling classical music to invigorating jazz, comedy nights, a Ceilidh, and engaging family events.

St John’s Smith Square starts 2024 by inviting audiences to embark on an epic musical voyage through the cosmos on 20th January 2024. Interstellar at 10 celebrates the music that underpins Christopher Nolan’s 2014 epic with Roger Sayer, the original organist on Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-nominated score, performing this iconic soundtrack on the majestic Smith Square organ to celebrate the film’s 10-year anniversary.

Individual concerts include a landmark concert with Southbank Sinfonia performing side-by-side with Britten Sinfonia in a programme for woodwind, brass and percussion on 18th January. Opening with Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, a piece Leonard Bernstein described as “the world’s leading hit tune”, the concert will be a journey through works by Mozart, Stravinsky, and feature Lindberg’s Gran Duo, a piece commissioned for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle. The performance will culminate with Alberga’s Nightscapesand Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy, two pieces that paint images of vibrant song and dance – one during a Jamaican dusk, the other a bright British afternoon.

St John’s will present A Scottish Feast for Burns Night;  this one-of-a-kind concert on 25th January will include Malcolm Arnold’s Four Scottish Songs, irreverent Scottish Dances that become drunker as they go on, with looser, tipsy rhythms. Thea Musgrave’s Songs for a Winter’s Evening sets Robbie Burns’ text to exquisite song.Mendelssohn’s monumental Scottish Symphony concludes the evening – a piece that draws on the composer’s own experiences of the Highlands, with jaunty folkish rhythms that erupt into victorious fanfare in the finale. There will be a post-concert Ceilidh for those keen to get involved!

The Spring/Summer season will see a broad repertoire on show, from folk music to jazz. The February #ConcertLabsees classical and folk music collide as acclaimed fiddle-player Sam Sweeney and Rob Harborn build on tunes collected by the likes of Vaughan Williams and Bartok for a performance that buzzes with spontaneity and invention. In May, Southbank Sinfonia will team up with two of London's most prominent jazz instrumentalists for a classical fusion. Award-winning jazz guitarist Rob Luft will be joined by jazz bass player, composer and arranger Misha Mullov-Abbado to perform a variety of compositions with Southbank Sinfonia, pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved within the scope of 'classical' music.

St John’s Thursday Lunchtime Concerts will continue to showcase the exceptional talent of internationally renowned musicians alongside those of emerging artists in 2024. The concerts include performances from current members of the Southbank Sinfonia and its 2024 Fellows and returning alumni, as well as world-renowned talent including organist Roger Sayer and rising stars like pianist Kyle Hutchings, and the Royal Academy of Music’s Hugh Mackay and Junyan Chen. These concerts are the perfect opportunity to sample St John’s Smith Square’s Footstool Café. Currently undergoing the process of refurbishment, the Café will be ready to be reopened in early February with new catering, premiering a new lunch and pre-concert dinner menu.

The season will also see St John’s host the return of the popular Easter Festival and the London Festival of Baroque Music, with more details to follow.

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