Multitudes

The epic new Multitudes festival at Southbank Centre is a cross-disciplinary festival powered by classical music. Bringing together leading visual artists, poets, performers and choreographers from across the world, each night sees a unique performance take to the stage.

Daphnis and Chloé

Wed 23 Apr at 6:30pm and 8:30pm
The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s enchanted playing and Circa’s daring contemporary choreography and circus bring Ravel's sumptuous ballet to life. The collaboration between orchestra and gravity-defying circus teases out a world as intriguing, sensual and strange as the music itself with dramatic group acrobatics, intimate duos and aerial solos.

Oh To Believe in Another World

Thu 24 Apr at 7:30pm
William Kentridge’s film has its UK premiere with the Shostakovich symphony that inspired it, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra. Using collage, puppets and masked actors, artist William Kentridge creates a dream-like ‘Soviet museum’ to accompany Shostakovich’s powerful Symphony No.10, featuring a cast of characters including Lenin, Stalin and Shostakovich himself. The evening begins with a performance of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.

Vexations

Thu 24 Apr & Fri 25 Apr
Pianist Igor Levit performs Erik Satie’s challenging Vexations, a work that lasts upwards of 16 hours, in this unique long-durational performance directed by conceptual artist Marina Abramović. Vexations is one of classical music’s most simple, yet arduous and demanding, works. The one-page score includes an instruction to repeat it 840 times (which can take between 16 and 20 hours). This is a long-duration performance. Tickets are available for the entire duration of the performance, or for one-hour slots.

R.I.S.E.

Fri 25 Apr at 7:45pm
Chineke! Orchestra joins forces with George the Poet for a night of music, spoken word and poetry around the themes of Resilience, Identity, Strength and Equality.

Singing All About Love

Sat 26 Apr
The Multi-Story Orchestra brings together young musicians to create a musical response to Mickalene Thomas’s exhibition All About Love. The performance takes place throughout the day at the Hayward Gallery where the exhibition is currently on show and the opportunity to enjoy the performance is included in the gallery entrance ticket.

Mahler 8

Sat 26 Apr at 7.30pm
With Tom Morris and Edward Gardner, the London Philharmonic Orchestra presents a supernova performance of Mahler’s colossal symphony to set the heavens ringing. Three choirs, eight starry singers and one of the largest orchestras ever put on stage: there’s a reason why Mahler’s Eighth is often called the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’.

Refractions

Sat 26 Apr at 7:45pm
Experience a kaleidoscopic collision of music and dance through the ages in a one-of-a-kind collaboration between electronic musician Clark, the boundary-pushing Manchester Collective and choreographer Melanie Lane.

Symphony of Shadows

Sun 27 Apr at 3pm
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performs Shostakovich’s defiant Symphony No.7 (or the ‘Leningrad Symphony’) to a captivating video installation conceived by Kirill Serebrennikov. Through abstract imagery, light and shadow, the installation captures the symphony’s essence: the struggle and ultimate resilience of the human spirit. The first half of the programme continues the theme with the orchestra performing Sibelius’s Finlandia and Weill’s 4 Songs of Walt Whitman.

LEGACY

Mon 28 Apr at 7:30pm
Dig into Birmingham’s grime and hip-hop scenes, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and some of the most influential artists creating music in the city. The line-up includes Lady Leshurr, Roxxxan, Mayhem NODB, Sox, Trilla, SafOne, Pressure, T.Roadz, Trappy, CreezOn and Brixx, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and conductor Phil Meadows.

In C

Tue 29 Apr & Wed 30 Apr at 7:45pm
Dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests and London Sinfonietta join forces to present their vision of Terry Riley’s In C, a trailblazing piece of musical minimalism. An open composition that was revolutionary at the time of its writing (1964), the score consists of 53 musical phrases and reads like stage directions for musicians; based on this, Sasha Waltz and her dancers created a choreographic interpretation that follows a similarly variable structure and is deliberately designed not to be a fixed stage piece.

City of Floating Sounds

Wed 30 Apr at 7:30pm
Composer and pianist Huang Ruo and the BBC Concert Orchestra take the audience on an immersive musical journey through London to connect with their surroundings and each other with the audience's interaction with the piece beginning before the concert through a bespoke interactive app.  The evening also includes performances of Advaith Jagannath’s Gaia and Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten.

Carnival

Sat 3 May at 7pm
Roll up, roll up to Aurora Orchestra’s new reimagining of The Carnival of the Animals, created in collaboration with physical theatre company Frantic Assembly. In the first half of this new production, Aurora Orchestra presents a staging of Saint-Saëns’ vibrant introduction to orchestral instruments, performed from memory and infused with movement, design, lighting and new text by Kate Wakeling. The second part of the Carnival sees the presentation of a Richard Ayres’ specially commissioned new work Dr Frompou’s Anatomical Study of an Orchestra with internationally-renowned physical theatre company Frantic Assembly.

Carnival: Family Edit

Sat 3 May 2025, 3pm
Round up the family for a family-friendly matinee performance of Aurora Orchestra’s Carnival.