The 2026 version of the Spitalfields Music Pageant begins the celebrations of the Pageant’s fiftieth anniversary. Established in 1976 by conductor Richard Hickox, this 12 months marks the start of Spitalfields Music’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations which is able to culminate in 2027 with the anniversary of the primary Pageant. The 2026 pageant takes place from 26 June to eight July in venues throughout East London, that includes innovative modern music, classical repertoire and cross-artform collaborations together with 20 premieres.
Consistent with the pageant’s cross-artform themes, spoken phrase takes a distinguished function. The opening live performance options 4 newly commissioned poems on theme of what does peace seem like, alongside a brand new work by Philip Herbert impressed by a quote from UN Secretary António Guterres: “Peace is the lacking piece” carried out by the Metropolis of London Sinfonia with music by George Walker, Reena Esmail, Arvo Pärt, and Sibelius. Then author Ali Smith joins forces with the New European Ensemble to current the UK premieres of 4 new musical works primarily based on her Seasonal Quartet novels – Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer time, interspersed with readings from the books that impressed them.
Broadcaster and author Gillian Moore CBE is joined by Stephen Colegrave and Dennis Bovell MBE to delve into what made 1976, the 12 months that Spitalfields Music was based, such a defining 12 months – The Nice Heatwave; an financial disaster; the demise of Benjamin Britten; the Intercourse Pistols’ Anarchy within the UK.
Nonetheless on the theme of political engagement, for No man is an island soprano Mimi Doulton and Jonathan Higgins, electronics carry out three new commissions by composers Elaine Mitchener, Linda Buckley and Krõõt-Kärt Kaev which replicate on what it means to be European right this moment, ten years on from the referendum that sparked the UK’s choice to depart from the European Union. While performer-composers Emily Levy and Matthew Bourne current a strong reimagining of British folks music impressed by Julia Varley – a pioneering British activist, commerce unionist, suffragette, and social reformer.
Customary Concern make their pageant debut with a programme of latest music from female-identifying music creators, that includes the world premiere of a brand new piece by Australian composer and ecologist Kate Milligan which blends music and subject recordings to discover the hidden world of London’s wildlife alongside the Islington canal. [I recently chatted to Standard Issue, see my article]. Trombone quartet Slide Motion presents a live performance that locations the trombone in a very new mild that includes world premieres from Rockey Solar Keting, Ben Nobuto, Omri Kochavi, and the winner of the inaugural Henfrey-Spitalfields Prize. [I chatted to Slide Action in 2024 about their mission to create a new voice for the trombone, see my interview]
Carolyn Sampson stars in Within the Stomach of the Beast, a theatrical reimagining of three works from 18th century French composer Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Cantates Bibliques (Biblical cantatas) inserting a recent feminist slant on the biblical tales of Adam, Jonah, and Jephthah, sung in translations by Toria Banks. For The Music Sung True, the Carice Singers and George Parris carry collectively seminal choral works from the twentieth and twenty first centuries, together with a hardly ever carried out masterpiece by Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur and choral music by Luigi Dallapiccola. Together with the London premieres of 4 new works by recent expertise from the Composers Academy at Cheltenham Music Pageant. [I chatted to George Parris at the end of last year, see my interview]
To shut this 12 months’s version, the pageant returns to the Tower of
London for a live performance in collaboration with the Choir of the Chapels
Royal, HM Tower of London that explores the historic legacy of music
relationship again to the sixteenth Century that includes Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli.
Returning to that 1976 founding of the pageant, singer, songwriter and composer Tom Hickox, the son of founder Richard Hickox, returns to Spitalfields Music Pageant with a live performance that includes New YVC that mixes new materials with songs and compositions from his earlier albums.
And Spitalfields Music is not simply in regards to the pageant. Their RAM Faculties Tour is a long-standing collaboration with the Royal Academy of Music which brings musicians into school rooms round East London. An ensemble of musicians from the RAM delivers interactive performances throughout college assemblies, connecting music to PSHE matters, and bringing it to life in an enticing method for our younger audiences. While throughout the pageant, 200 youngsters from the Neighbourhood Faculties come collectively to attach and have a good time by tune within the Main Massive Sing, together with a specifically commissioned piece written for the younger folks by composer Anna Pool.
Full particulars from the pageant’s web site.
