Isata Kanneh-Mason - Halo

Pianist **Isata Kanneh-Mason** first entered the Concrete Concert Hall in the depths of the Covid-19 Lockdown in the summer of 2020. We were determined to offer a live programme that year, and these were some of the only performances to take place with an audience in the UK. She dazzled audiences in Peckham in two performances that offered solace and sanctuary in those strange times. Now an international star and multi-award winner including the coveted Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and an Opus Klassik award for best young artist, and with five recorded albums, she returns to Bold Tendencies (where she said she’s given some of her favourite concerts) with a programme specially considered for our euphoria theme. She includes Maurice Ravel’s macabre nocturnal fantasy Gaspard de la nuit (1908), known for its immense technical difficulty and many moods and colours, masterpieces by Beethoven - the “Moonlight Sonata” and “Waldstein”, its finale evoking the breaking of dawn in all its musical rapture - and illuminating the music of Dobrinka Tabkova, a young British-Bulgarian composer whose music burns bright and radiant in our contemporary moment.

**Music by Beethoven, Ravel, Tabakova**