We begin our Déjà Vu live programme with Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms: a work of spiritual awakening like no other, uniquely arranged for piano-four hands by Shostakovich. Maki Namekawa, much beloved by Bold Tendencies as by audiences around the world, returns to open the season; joined by her husband Dennis Russell Davies, eminent pianist, conductor and chamber musician. Speaking to reverence, rituals and natural cycles, this first event includes UK premieres of works written specially for this most spectacular double act - Keith JarrettRitual (performed in honour of his 80th birthday), and Philip GlassFour Movements for Two Pianos - as well as The Seasons by John Cage, the composer’s tribute to Native American thinking about the year’s cycle of time. Forming a Piano Duo in 2003, Maki Namekawa & Dennis Russell Davies have appeared together across the world with their unique musical sensibility and uncompromising commitment to excellence, including the premiere of many new works and commissions by the leading composers of our contemporary moment. Following Maki Namekawa’s extraordinary performances here in previous years (the complete Philip Glass Piano Etudes for our “Crisis” season in 2023 and her rendering of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert for “Communion” in 2024), we are excited to welcome the Namekawa-Davies-Duo to open the Concrete Concert Hall with a double dream of piano for Déjà Vu in 2025. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Bold Tendencies celebrates the complex and cryptic lyricism of the enigmatic MF DOOM, in celebration of his profound effect on the musical and cultural landscape. So-called the "elusive bard of hip-hop” (Rolling Stone), the enigmatic MF DOOM is undoubtedly amongst your favourite rappers’ favourite rappers - noted for his intricate wordplay, cryptic lyricism, signature metal mask, and “supervillain” stage persona. A major figure of underground and alternative hip hop in the 2000s, DOOM’s albums are resolutely human works, rooted in tragedy; activated by his unprecedented flow, bravado and potent self-mythology, to profound effect on the landscape of music and culture. DOOM released his first full length album, Operation: Doomsday in 1999 - idiosyncratic and possessed of raw lyricism, and latterly hailed as “one of the defining documents of the independent hip-hop explosion” of the 1990s. We will play selected tracks from the LP, adorned with samples, snippets and heady rhyme schemes; bedroom electro, R&B, and the cartoon pleasure of late 1980s hip-hop. Enfolding political commentary with reflection on social mores, DOOM’s cult classic album will be interspersed with creative responses from guest artists including Abbas Zahedi with bill daggs, feeo and James Massiah. Presented by Bold Tendencies. This is a 12+ event.

The Sea from writer and director Irum Fazal and composers Laila Arafah and Elif Nur Karlıdağ is a modern opera about Palestine, with sung and spoken English and Arabic intertwined with European and Middle Eastern instruments. The Sea holds up threads of human story against a backdrop of devastation: a little girl cannot find her mother, and her mother searches for her every day. Loss, memory and hope drive us towards the water's edge as we search for a moment of peace. Feargal Hylton’s musical direction creates an atmospheric journey of longing, where what is barely noticed swells to acute sensation and back again. A dream of thought, half-thought and imagined past confronted by unbearable reality is told to us by Palestinian sopranos Dima Bawab and Nour Darwish, tenor Mark Bonney and chamber orchestra, conducted by Gabriella Teychenné. The Sea is a Once Arts production supported by Arts Council England, and is part of Shubbak Festival. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

We are thrilled to welcome back independent publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions, hosting their Annual Summer Party celebrating ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing. Poet, critic and choreographer Oluwaseun Olayiwola reads from his debut collection Strange Beach - an intimate and ecological, erotic and philosophical illumination of the body as a porous landscape. Writer and literary translator Jen Calleja reads from her new collaboration with Gregor Hens, The City and the World; part memoir, part travelogue, traversing the phenomenon of the contemporary city and our place within it. Writer and essayist Ariel Saramandi reads from her essay collection Portrait of an Island on Fire, an examination of the legacy of colonialism in Mauritius. Novelist Claire-Louise Bennett reads from her forthcoming tour de force of fiction, Big Kiss, Bye-Bye, which explores the mystery of how people come into and go out of our lives, leaving us forever in their grasp. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Despite being written some 300 years ago, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is a source of ever-renewing inspiration for people of all ages and backgrounds; offering listeners and performers a truly universal experience. For Déjà Vu we bring his rich sonic world to life in five distinct events, celebrating his music for unaccompanied instruments on cello, harpsichord, synthesisers, organ and keyboard. The Art of Fugue dates from the last decade of Bach’s life and is believed to be his final work. It is his most in-depth and exhaustive exploration of the possibilities derived from a single musical theme - introduced, transformed and elaborated into increasingly complex, powerful hypnotic sonic experiences. Published a year after his death it remains unfinished, with the last of its 18 pieces lacking a final page. It is thought that between 30 and 40 bars of music are missing - the music ends abruptly mid-line. As the final movement evaporates into thin air, we are left to contemplate what might have followed. James McVinnie returns to Bold Tendencies to play this very special programme on the Bach 2000 Organ - a white and gold pipe organ designed after the great organ of 1711 at Freiburg Cathedral, built to mark the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death. This unique mobile instrument has travelled widely, visiting St Mark’s Venice, the Musikverein Vienna and St Nicolai Leipzig; and now coming to our rooftop home. This event is supported by Scops Art Trust. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Multi-Story Orchestra unveils their bold new musical STUCK. STUCK narrates the relationship between an ambitious young man and his barber uncle, whose shop - and way of life - are threatened by a looming local redevelopment project. When a letter from the council arrives promising a bright new future, clashing perspectives spark a battle neither of them realises is already lost. As the uncle’s early dementia brings hidden struggles to the surface, the nephew is forced to confront what home really means - before it disappears forever. STUCK articulates the inner thoughts of the everyday people subject to processes of regeneration. Centring young people’s voices, this timely story blends the soulfulness of gospel and an orchestral score with the raw energy of grime, drill and Afrobeats. Personally and politically charged, STUCK is about community and nostalgia, and the fight to hold onto the places - and people - that shape us. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Distinguished translator, acclaimed vocalist and musician Haleh Liza Gafori reads her inspired, widely praised interpretations of Rumi, considered the greatest poet of the Persian language. Written some 800 years ago, Rumi’s lyrical poetry continues to provide solace and guidance when we revisit it in our contemporary moment. Transcending national borders and ethnic divisions, cultural conventions and religious sectarianism, Rumi’s vision is of a world governed by universal love, compassion and collectivity. His masterworks of world literature have been widely translated into many languages and formats, and there are few today who have not encountered some paraphrases of his prophetic compositions. We are pleased to welcome Haleh Liza Gafori, joining us for a live reading drawn from her acclaimed volumes of translations of Rumi’s verse: GOLD (2022) and WATER (2025). Whether Rumi confesses, critiques, praises, nudges or commands, his startling voice and leaps of imagery dazzle and ring with enduring urgency; and Gafori’s special presentation uplifts these propulsive messages of human liberation. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Celebrating American composer Steve Reich with a programme dedicated to his pioneering minimalism. Steve Reich himself says that the Colin Currie Group’s performances of his music are “the best I’ve ever heard”. Led by Colin Currie, “the world’s finest and most daring percussionist” (The Spectator), his special programme for Déjà Vu spans Reich’s many repetitions. Music for Pieces of Wood (1973) has a structure based only on rhythmic “build ups”; Six Marimbas (1986), a precursor of ambient and techno music inspired by African drumming and gamelan, stacks eight-beat rhythmic patterns to create a rich and spectacular sonic world; and Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973) grows spontaneously from one simple pattern, to many patterns played by different instruments. Join us for an evening of Reich’s heart-and-mind music: early investigations into phase shifting, mid-career interrogations of augmentation and psychoacoustics, and grand, hypnotic later works with formal counterpoint and functional harmony. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Virtuoso keyboardist James McVinnie plays from J S Bach’s extraordinary works for keyboards, as part of Back to Bach. Continuing Bold Tendencies’ cross season celebration of Baroque polymath J S Bach, we focus here on the Italian Concerto and French Overture - written by Bach as a pair, set in F major and B minor (the most distant keys to one another); showing his chameleon-like approach to the assimilation of different national styles of composition into his own inimitable writing. In the Italian Concerto the keyboard is the whole orchestra. Intricate passages are passed between imagined soloists and tutti-a tour-de-force riot for the fingers. The French Overture is a collection of dances book-ended with a grand Overture and unique Echo movement. Bach moulds and remoulds the same musical material again and again into each different dance movement, which make up the work as a whole. The Concerto and Overture are interspersed by pieces from one of the most important works in music history - The Well-Tempered Clavier. Composed in the early 1720s, this 48 piece collection spanning all 24 major and minor keys was written by Bach “For the profit and use of the studious musical youth”; they are at once delightfully imaginative, and triumphs of musical geometry. This event is supported by Scops Art Trust. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Bold Tendencies platforms the “super-producer” J Dilla, uplifting his prolific, distinctive sound and impact. In his brief but brilliant life, Dilla accumulated kudos as one of the most influential artists in hip hop and popular music. Described by friend and music producer Madlib as the “Coltrane of Hip-Hop”, Dilla’s raw and imperfect style is characterised by its loose, human feel - his creation of a uniquely “Dilla Time”, possessed of a complex, and soulful swing and groove. Join us as we play selected tracks from his second and final studio album Donuts - released on his 32nd birthday, just three days before his untimely death in 2006. Widely acclaimed for its wrangling with impermanence, the album is largely considered Dilla’s swansong and magnus opus, playing with the boundaries of the known and unknown, past, present and future; a tapestry of liberal layering and eclectic sampling. Dilla’s relentlessly fresh wordplay, pun and lyrical wit will be interspersed with creative responses from guest artists including Fraser T Smith and Yomi Sode, sidestepping the terrains of more traditional listening parties, sound stories, and audio essays. Presented by Bold Tendencies. This is a 12+ event.

How do we love? Let us count the ways. Multi-Story Orchestra’s new orchestral and choral piece Love in Many Forms explores the varied kinds of love that shape our lives - from the thrill of first love to the warmth of family love, from love that challenges societal expectations to the love we learn to show ourselves. Love in Many Forms invites you to reflect on how love defines us. Love in Many Forms has been created by the Orchestra’s South London based Young Creatives, with songwriter Dupri McKoy and composer Lewis Daniel. In true Multi-Story style, the performance will begin with musicians spread all around the space before coming together for the full orchestral performance, led by Music Director Yshani Perinpayagam and Choir Leader Dupri McKoy. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Bold Tendencies pays homage to Thomas Mann’s wartime radio broadcasts Deutsches Hörer (Listen, Germany!), with new messages on the issues of our time contrasted with readings from the originals. An unlikely hero of democracy, Thomas Mann has shocked and captivated audiences since the turn of the 20th century. Mann’s output - spanning novels, short stories, poetry, essays, lectures, letters and diaries - charts the evolution of both his own, and collective political thought and cultural mores; the changing tides of Europe in an era of technological shifts and World Wars. From October 1940 Mann delivered 55 monthly short broadcasts via the BBC under the title Deutsches Hörer! (Listen, Germany!), condemning the brute violence and crude philistinism of the time. Advocating for ongoing resistance and collective action, their exploration of human injustice, inequity and global atrocity is enduring. On the occasion of what would have been his 150th birthday, Listen, World! draws upon the spirit of Mann’s radio speeches. Alongside readings of the originals, we welcome contributions from artists and thinkers of our time including Nikolaj Schultz, Charlie Fox and Mohsen Mohamed; their messages honouring and staking claim in the legacy of resistance and hope propelled by Mann and so many brave others. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Artist and choreographer Eve Stainton makes their Bold Tendencies debut with The Joystick and The Reins (World Premiere), accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s seminal score for The Thing (1982). The Joystick and The Reins explores who is deemed to be, and those who decide what constitutes a ‘threat’ within society; exploring how marginalised groups have been instrumentalised through systems of oppression and authoritarianism. Cycling through hyper-emotional states of intensity, the scene and solo figure become a site for the audience’s own projections. This becomes a choreographic practice of distortion, referencing ideas of power, dominance, perpetrator, victim, threat and interpretation. Influences for The Joystick and The Reins include historical reenactments, police and riot arrest imagery, and 1980s Crime Watch episodes; examining what it means to reconstruct a theatrical scene that draws on truth, and how societal constructs keep people ‘at risk’ of incarceration in a place of vulnerability. Morricone’s music finds resonance with Stainton’s mutual exploration of societal suspicion, psychological horror, and the devastating potential of individual isolation. Co-commissioned by Bold Tendencies, Dansehallerne (DK), Transform, Possession Performance + Automation and The Place. Supported by Queen Mary University of London, Old Diorama Arts Centre, Den Frie Udstilling (DK), SLUG (DE) and L'Ecart Biennial (CA). This event is supported by the Wavendon Foundation. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

The London Symphony Orchestra, one of the world’s top orchestras, makes its Bold Tendencies debut performance with a special evening of works for strings. The LSO’s first programme for the concrete concert hall - devised by Benjamin Marquise Gilmore, violinist and Leader of this great orchestra - begins with the so-called “ninth symphony” by pioneering Polish composer and violin virtuoso Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969). The Concerto for String Orchestra (1946) is amongst her most important works and won a Polish State Prize in 1950, going on to be performed worldwide. The sensibility of traditional music is enfolded via Sally Beamish’s The Day Dawn (for string orchestra), based on an old Shetland fiddle tune of the same name. Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings follows; composed in the late summer of 1880 it layers beauty, joy and sweetness with solemnity, melancholy and devastation. The programme ends with Entr’acte by multi-award-winning composer Caroline Shaw. An alternately illusive, spiky, playful and soporific string instrument sound experience, she says of it: “I love the way some music suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.” Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Sæunn Thorsteindottír play the Complete Cello Suites as part of Back to Bach. Speaking profoundly to our age, Bach’s supremely human music transcends any sense of current genre and fashion; encapsulating the range of emotional, intellectual and physical experience. Largely unknown for some 200 years after their composition, Bach’s six works for unaccompanied cello are amongst the composer’s greatest musical achievements. We are joined by exceptional musicians of the new generation - acclaimed Icelandic cellist Sæunn Thorsteindottír joining us specially, and friend of Bold Tendencies Sheku Kanneh-Mason (from whom the idea came to play the Cello Suites in our raw concrete spaces) - for a special concert, offering this unrivalled music of intimacy and meditation a most extreme setting. This event is supported by Scops Art Trust. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

James McVinnie Ensemble animate the Concrete Concert Hall with the virtuoso electronic realisations of Wendy Carlos, as part of Back to Bach. In 1962, American composer and musician Wendy Carlos recorded various electronic pieces at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Centre in New York City - including a rendition of Bach’s Two-Part Invention in F Major, and the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major. In 1967 Carlos would play these recordings to producer Rachel Elkind, laying the groundwork for a collaboration that would evolve into the 1978 album Switched-On Bach. Recorded in Carlos’ studio apartment using the then-recently invented Moog synthesiser, Switched-On Bach featured 10 electronic interpretations of Bach’s music; an unexpected success that reached No.1 on the Billboard Classical Albums chart. Join us as the James McVinnie Ensemble (James McVinnie, Eliza McCarthy, Siwan Rhys and Hugh Rowlands) pay homage to Wendy Carlos with a sequence of Bach’s works arranged for the Moog SoundLab UK, a portable studio centred around one of the rarest electronic instruments - the limited edition reissue of the legendary 1960s System 55 Moog Synthesizer. Specially designed by Moog Music Inc in 2014, the Lab is based in the Institute of Sound Recording at the University of Surrey, UK. This event is supported by Scops Art Trust. The Moog SoundLab UK is supplied with the support of Paul Smith. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Jean Rondeau, celebrated contemporary ambassador for his instrument, plays the Goldberg Variations on harpsichord. Composed (according to the title page) “for the soul’s delight of music lovers”, Bach’s Goldberg Variations fascinate every generation of musicians. This music reflects the world it finds itself in: past, present and future. The Goldberg Variations are 75 minutes of wildly virtuosic keyboard music: demanding, exacting, filled with glittering, intricate ornaments, but equally liberating for player and listener both. As Bach himself wrote, they were “composed for music-lovers to refresh their spirits” (reportedly in particular for warding off insomnia). Each of the 30 successive variations grows out of the previous one yet unfolds its own individual magic and drama, offering reassurance as well as exhilaration. We are thrilled to welcome outstanding musician Jean Rondeau to Bold Tendencies for the first time, to play the Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord - as they would have been when first played in 1741 by Bach’s student, 14-year-old harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. This event is supported by Scops Art Trust and the Continuo Foundation. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

We welcome acclaimed Rachmaninoff interpreters from around the world and spanning multiple generations, for back-to-back iterations of the composer’s four Piano Concertos. Ryan Wang, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, Boris Giltburg and Junyan Chen join us as soloists and the Philharmonia Orchestra, returning for a fifth consecutive year of performances, is conducted by Charlotte Corderoy. Spanning 50 years of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 69 year life, each of his four masterworks were written and subsequently much revisited, revised and reworked. They are some of the most extreme, technically challenging pieces in the piano repertoire, and some of the most famous and best-loved music in popular culture. The four Concertos arrived in a period of seismic change across socio-political and cultural life, and their sound worlds represent this in shimmering technicolour and contrasting emotional moods of melancholy, grotesquerie, nostalgia and exultation. Join us to hear these colossal pieces - rarely performed in this complete form, and never before in the UK - each requiring the stamina of an athlete, the dexterity of a surgeon, and the soul of an artist. This event is supported by the Rachmaninoff Commissioning Circle: Sam & Alexandra Morgan and those who wish to remain anonymous. The concert grand piano is supplied and maintained by Steinway & Sons, London. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Our season ends with the world premiere of Garland, a large-scale new work for orchestra and chorus of 118 performers by Oliver Leith, visionary British composer of the new generation. Garland is a spectacular procession of sound, music and singing. Leith’s most ambitious work to date is performed by the amassed forces of 12 Ensemble, GBSR Duo, EXAUDI, soprano Patricia Auchterlonie and a mixed amateur chorus; conducted by Naomi Woo and Jack Sheen with choral refrains written by Charlie Fox. The choir is augmented by a horse, bicycles, car and other pedestrian detritus ‘played’ to create noise and rhythm. 32 string and 16 brass players unite with a large battery of percussion and sampler keyboards to form an atypical orchestra, enveloping the audience in sound as the performers circulate our Concrete Concert Hall. Garland continues the relationship between Leith and Bold Tendencies, begun in 2023 with a presentation of his work good day good day bad day bad day (2018); continuing in 2024 with a programme of his three large-scale works for orchestra: Honey Siren (2019), Cartoon Sun (2023) and Pearly, goldy, woody, bloody, or, Abundance (2022). This event is supported by the Oliver Leith Commissioning Circle: Bob Shaw, Dorothe, Martin and Lukas Zueger-Knecht and those who wish to remain anonymous. The concert grand piano is supplied and maintained by Steinway & Sons, London. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.

Artist and choreographer Eve Stainton makes their Bold Tendencies debut with The Joystick and The Reins (World Premiere), accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s seminal score for The Thing (1982). The Joystick and The Reins explores who is deemed to be, and those who decide what constitutes a ‘threat’ within society; exploring how marginalised groups have been instrumentalised through systems of oppression and authoritarianism. Cycling through hyper-emotional states of intensity, the scene and solo figure become a site for the audience’s own projections. This becomes a choreographic practice of distortion, referencing ideas of power, dominance, perpetrator, victim, threat and interpretation. Influences for The Joystick and The Reins include historical reenactments, police and riot arrest imagery, and 1980s Crime Watch episodes; examining what it means to reconstruct a theatrical scene that draws on truth, and how societal constructs keep people ‘at risk’ of incarceration in a place of vulnerability. Morricone’s music finds resonance with Stainton’s mutual exploration of societal suspicion, psychological horror, and the devastating potential of individual isolation. Co-commissioned by Bold Tendencies, Dansehallerne (DK), Transform, Possession Performance + Automation and The Place. Supported by Queen Mary University of London, Old Diorama Arts Centre, Den Frie Udstilling (DK), SLUG (DE) and L'Ecart Biennial (CA). This event is supported by the Wavendon Foundation. Presented by Bold Tendencies. All ages.