Gaia x BBC Concert Orchestra: Sounds of the Earth
- Friday, august 28
- 7:30 PM-9:30 PM
- Royal Festival Hall Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, United Kingdom
Info
On 28 August 2026, the BBC Concert Orchestra sets up at London’s Royal Festival Hall for a strings-led programme that moves between modern minimalism, film-tinted emotion and early 20th-century English lyricism, with Luke Jerram’s Gaia hovering above the players. The evening frames music as a way to look back at Earth: not as a backdrop, but as something you feel in the body, through harmony, pulse and sustained sound.
The set opens with the reflective sweep of Vaughan Williams, then shifts to the layered, atmospheric writing of Hildur Guðnadóttir, composer and cellist whose music thrives on texture and slow-building intensity. Dobrinka Tabakova’s Sun Triptych follows, tracing a full arc from ‘Dawn’ to ‘Day’ to ‘Dusk’ in luminous, finely grained string writing. Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings brings its well-known, direct emotional line, before Arvo Pärt closes the night with Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, where bells and descending strings turn repetition into ritual.
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Venue
Royal Festival Hall
Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, United Kingdom