London Philharmonic Orchestra marks 200th anniversary of St John’s Church Waterloo with The Chamber Sessions.
From January 2025, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) will launch The Chamber Sessions, a series of intimate hour-long 6.30pm concerts at St John’s Church Waterloo. Following the success of our 2024 chamber concert series, we are delighted to continue this partnership with St John’s as the church celebrates its 200th year, bringing audiences closer to the music and showcasing members of the LPO in a more intimate setting.
The first concert, on 23 January 2025, opens with a quintet that Mozart called ‘the best work I have ever written’ in a letter to his father. The concert continues with an adventurous quintet romp: Hindemith’s Kleine Kammermusik for winds, and Grammy-nominated American composer Valerie Coleman’s Tzigane, inspired by Middle Eastern scales and gestures that buzz with a wild, free spirit.
On 22 February 2025, an LPO string trio will bring to life a vivid collection of sonic portraits, featuring the captivating music of Andrew Norman. Continuing the sacred theme, the New London Chamber Choir will join the Orchestra for Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel – a meditative soundscape for chamber choir, solo viola, celeste and percussion, written in tribute to the visionary artist Mark Rothko and the Texas chapel displaying his intriguing black-hued paintings.
7 March 2025 sees The Chamber Sessions foreground works by composers of colour, opening with LPO Composer-in-Residence Tania León’s String Quartet No. 2. . Jessie Montgomery’s Break Away was born out of a series of improvisations riffing on several different styles of music from hip-hop to electronica. With an eclectic musical palate and crafty compositional technique to match, Brian Raphael Nabors’s Jump draws from combinations of jazz funk, R&B and gospel, with the modern flair of contemporary classical music. Former LPO Young Composer Daniel Kidane’s Foreign Tongues sees the cello pitted against the other string players, aiming to explore the idea of different languages communicating and interacting with each other. Vera, Hannah Kendall’s brilliant early work, rounds off this concert.
Tickets start at £12
Further Information: What's On - London Philharmonic Orchestra