Southbank Centre to launch new classical festival

Next year London’s Southbank Centre is set to bring a brand-new arts festival to the capital. Multitudes will present events bringing together UK orchestras join with artists, performers and creatives to ‘reimagine the concert hall experience’.

The festival, which runs from 23 April to 3 May 2025 has been created in conjunction with the Centre’s resident orchestras – Aurora Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, and Philharmonia Orchestra – as well as visiting orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra and Multi-Story Orchestra. Each orchestra will work with an artistic partner from across art, sound, performance, dance, and spoken word.

The festival aims to redefine the orchestral experience and attract audiences both familiar and new. Partners will range from choreographers Melanie Lane and Sasha Waltz and artists William Kentridge and Mickalene Thomas to theatre designers Tom Morris and Kirill Serebrennikov.

Highlights are set to include R.I.S.E, an evening of music, spoken word and poetry on the topic of resilience, change and identity presented by Chineke! Orchestra in collaboration with poet and podcaster George the Poet, Oh To Believe In Another World , combining South African artist William Kentridge’s film of the same name with Dmitri Shostakovich’s subversive Symphony No. 10  performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra. Elsewhere in the programme The Multi-Story Orchestra take over the Hayward Gallery and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra collaborates with Punch Records to unites the sounds of grime, hip hop, rap, and orchestral music.

Further performers will be announced on 27 January.