Chineke! Chamber Ensemble provides crucial opportunities for established and emerging Black and ethnically diverse classical musicians. The Ensemble has made an immense impact on the music world and won numerous awards, with its exhilarating energy, its infectious enthusiasm and its gathering together of exceptional players from across Europe.

Drawn from the finest musicians in the larger Chineke! Orchestra, the Chineke! Chamber Ensemble makes its Festival debut with two exquisite chamber works.

The first is by Coleridge-Taylor, born in London to an English mother and a father from Sierra Leone. He was one of the most influential and popular composers of his day and now his music is engaging with new audiences. This is a rare opportunity to experience his powerful Nonet, written for what amounts to a miniature orchestra of strings, wind and piano. It’s one of his best-loved, most immediate pieces, full of lyrical melody.

The Chineke! Chamber Ensemble completes the programme with Vaughan Williams’s Piano Quintet, not heard in modern times until as recently as 1999. The composer wrote it before he famously immersed himself in English folk music and it’s full of tender melodies and surging passions.

Supported by Professor Ludmilla Jordanova