Songs at Day, Songs at Night Bristol

Sun 29 October 2023, 3.30pm

St Georges Hall, Bristol

Ticket price: General £15, Student £7.50

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Birmingham Concert

 

This October join BCMG at the acoustically renowned St Georges Hall, where they will perform composer Daniel Kidane's new Sound Investment piece for Thando Mjandana, the 2022 winner of the Voice Of Black Opera's Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Award, under the baton of Vimbayi Kaziboni.

This new piece sits alongside Sir Harrison Birtwistle's enigmatic, final ensemble work, …when falling asleep, Hannah Kendall's Between Carnival and Lent and Julian Anderson's Mitternachtslied in a stirring programme exploring themes of transience and the spaces in between.

BCMG is delighted to be supporting the Black British Classical Foundation in promoting their VOBO Singing Competition for a second year.

 

Want to get involved?

Our wonderful supporters mean we can commission more pieces like Daniel Kidane’s. We say thank you by naming them in the score, inviting them to rehearsals, and the world première, where they can meet the composer. For more info visit www.bcmg.org.uk/soundinvestment

 

Mimi Doulton Soprano

Thando Mjandana Tenor

Vimbayi Kaziboni Conductor

Daniel Kidane

Cradle Song for tenor and ensemble (2023, 6') world premiere on the poem by William Blake, BCMG Sound Investment commission

Primitive Blaze (2022, 12')

Julian Anderson

Thus (2023, 6') world premiere

Mitternachtslied (2020, 2023, 6') UK premiere; texts by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow & Friedrich Nietzsche

Hannah Kendall

Tuxedo: Between Carnival and Lent (2022, 7')

Harrison Birtwistle

Today Too (2004, 3')

From Vanitas (2009, 4')

… when falling asleep (2018, 7') on Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem I’d like to sing someone to sleep and fragments from Charles Algernon Swinburne, BCMG Sound Investment Commission

Daniel Kidane

Daniel Kidane began his musical education at the age of eight when he started playing the violin. He first received composition lessons at the Royal College of Music Junior Department and then went on to study privately in St Petersburg, receiving lessons in composition from Sergey Slonimsky. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the RNCM under the tutelage of Gary Carpenter and David Horne.

Highlights include orchestral works Woke, which was premièred by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor Sakari Oramo at the Last Night of the Proms in September 2019, and Zulu by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Breakbeat for the CBSO Youth Orchestra, which is inspired by Grime music; a chamber work for the Cheltenham Festival which draws inspiration from Jungle music and a new type of vernacular; a song cycle commissioned by Leeds Lieder and inspired by the poetry of Ben Okri; and a new piece entitled Dream Song for the baritone Roderick Williams and the Chineke! Orchestra which was played at the reopening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in April 2018.

 

Vimbayi Kaziboni

Described as a conductor of “great intensity, without distancing, maneuvering, without indifference” (neuemuzikzeitung) Zimbabwean-born conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni (b. 1988) is widely sought-after for his depth of approach and his interpretive imagination and expressivity. He has led many critically lauded performances with orchestras across the globe and has performed at some of the most prestigious concert halls in the world, including Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Hall, Royal Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie, Köln Philharmonie, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Wiener Konzerthaus, Philharmonie de Paris, Sala São Paulo, Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall at Southbank Centre, and at Lincoln Center.

The upcoming season includes critical debuts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, L’Orchestre de chambre de Genève, New World Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, Klangforum Wien, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, der/gelbe/klang, and at a number of festivals. He will return to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern and Ensemble Modern Orchestra, Ensemble Contrechamps, London Sinfonietta, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the orchestra of the Genève Haute École de Musique.

“A conductor who clearly knows his way around an avant-garde score” (The Times - London), critics have hailed Kaziboni among the foremost interpreters of modern classical music of his generation. He has led premières of hundreds of new works across the globe and has worked with many of today’s leading composers that include Helmut Lachenmann, Georg Friedrich Haas, Steve Reich, George Benjamin, Augusta Read Thomas, George Lewis, Liza Lim, Heiner Goebbels, Felipe Lara, Morten Lauridsen, Dai Fujikura, Rebecca Saunders, among many others.

Kaziboni has had a long association with two of the foremost orchestras of contemporary music in Europe: Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt) and Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), where he served as assistant conductor at the beginning of his career and now prolifically collaborates with as conductor and curator. Collaborators have also included the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Omaha Symphony, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contrechamps (Geneva), International Contemporary Ensemble (New York), Grossman Ensemble (Chicago), Hamburg Camerata, Dream Unfinished (New York), Omnibus Ensemble (Tashkent), Martha Graham Dance Company (New York), among many others.

Kaziboni currently serves on the artistic leadership team of the Boston Lyric Opera as artistic advisor, artist-in-residence with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), a fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, music director and conductor of the Composers Conference, and a professor of orchestral studies and contemporary Music at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

Previously he has served in roles as conductor of the International Ensemble Modern Academy - IEMA (Frankfurt), assistant conductor of Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), director of orchestral activities at Gettysburg College, artistic director of What’s Next? Ensemble (Los Angeles) and the New Philharmonic (Omaha), and artist-in-residence at Illkhom Theatre with the Omnibus Ensemble (Tashkent).

A former Fulbright Fellow (2013-14), Kaziboni holds degrees from the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles and the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (HfMDK) in Germany.

 

Thando Mjandana

South African tenor Thando Mjandana was a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme Anniversary Company at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. At the ROH, he has appeared as Odoardo Ariodante, Messenger Theodora, Philistine Samson et Dalila, Noble of Brabant Lohengrin and Gastone La traviata.

He trained at the University of Cape Town Opera School and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and made debuts at the ROH, English National Opera, Dutch National Opera and Cape Town Opera while still a student.

In 2022/23 he created the role of Caliban in the world première of Georg Friedrich Haas' Sycorax for Theater Bern, appeared as Policeman and Congregant in Blue at Dutch National Opera, and sang the role of Tamino The Magic Flute for Welsh National Opera. He finished the season as Nemorino L'elisir d'amore for Longborough Festival Opera and with role debuts as Acis Acis and Galatea (Waterperry Opera Festival) and Jupiter Semele (Blackheath Halls). Thando is the Winner of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Award at the 2022 Voice of Black Opera Competition.

Mimi Doulton

A graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and King’s College London, British-Pakistani soprano Mimi Doulton won second prize at the 2021 John Cage Interpretation Awards and was a finalist in the vocal section of the 2022 Royal Overseas League Annual Music Competition. Based in Germany since 2020, her work in opera and song takes her across the UK and Europe, with recent appearances at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre, Sommer in Stuttgart, London’s Southbank Centre and the Bamberger Symphoniker. In the 23/24 season she will make debuts at the LA Philharmonic in Oliver Leith’s Last Days, conducted by Thomas Ades, and at the Salzburg Taschenoper Festival, in a new work by Bernhard Gander, conducted by Peter Rundel. She has created roles in Giorgio Battistelli’s Wake (Birmingham Opera Company), Oliver Leith’s Last Days (ROH Linbury), and Jasmine Morris’ Animal Farm (Aldeburgh Festival); other contemporary roles include Max in Oliver Knussen’s Where the Wild Things Are (Bamberger Symphoniker and Shadwell Opera), and Jerusha in Gerald Barry’s The Intelligence Park (Music Theatre Wales and the Royal Opera). As a concert performer, she has recently premiered works by Rasmus Zwicki and Michael Finnissy at Spitalfields Festival and Ny Musik Birkerod (Denmark), broadcast on BBC Radio 3; collaborated with Neil Luck at Café Oto, Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart) and Sommer in Stuttgart; and performed works by Elisabeth Lutyens and Brian Elias at the Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room. Alongside her performing work, Mimi is part of Freelancers Make Theatre Work and I:OPERA, and hosts a podcast about sustainable travel. 

  

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