BBC Concert Orchestra: Streets of America

Thursday 18th January 2024

From West Side Story to Biden’s America: Kwamé Ryan shares the USA’s untold stories, including the UK premiere of a piece by Gabriel Kahane.

 

What brings you here? Have you ever been evicted? Have you ever been denied a lease or loan? The American composer Gabriel Kahane didn’t have any answers until he started talking to the homeless of contemporary America.

emergency shelter intake form is his response: a very modern oratorio, performed for the first time in the UK by the BBC Concert Orchestra in collaboration with the community chorus of Streetwise Opera.

The classical tradition collides with the voices – and the lived experience – of homeless people and the result is passionate, direct and startlingly sincere.

Conductor Kwamé Ryan opens with two more American cityscapes: West Side Story is as thrilling now as it was in 1957, but the tragedy at its heart is as raw, and as real, as ever.

More Lambeth Listings MORE

Lambeth Sunday 16 November

Mulatu Astatke

Mulatu Astatke is best known for changing the face of Ethiopian music during the ‘Swinging Addis’ era of…

Lambeth Sunday 23 November

Soumik Datta

Hear the sarod player and winner of the 2022 Aga Khan Award for Music, a visionary musician with…

Lambeth Wednesday 26 November

OrchLab Festival Day

Disabled adults and those who support them are invited to celebrate accessible music-making with the London Philharmonic Orchestra…

Lambeth Saturday 29 November

Sheku Kanneh-Mason Plays Bloch

The London Philharmonic Orchestra invites audiences on a journey through time, memory and imagination in a concert of…