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Chineke! Classical music for the many not the few!
Chineke! [www.chineke.org/Zen Grisdale]

Chineke! Orchestra: Songs of the Prophets
Queen Elizabeth Hall


FOUNDED in 2015, the Chineke! Orchestra is Europe’s first majority black and ethnically diverse orchestra. Through its training outreach programme, the Chineke! Foundation, it is doing for classical music what the Tomorrow’s Warriors scheme has done for jazz, nurturing promising young talent through the use of accomplished and dedicated mentors – with staggering results.

Chineke! already has a history of taking on bold and innovative projects – such as unearthing previously neglected classics like 19th-century black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. So they were ideal candidates for performing Songs of the Prophets: A Requiem for the Climate.

Commissioned by Christian Aid, the piece comprises four movements by four different composers, on the themes of Creation, Ruin, Recovery and Redemption – each piece interspersed by solo improvisations on tabla, nyatiti and talking drum by master percussionists from Africa and Asia.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
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