From January 2025, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) will launch The Chamber Sessions, a series of intimate hour-long 6.30pm concerts at St John’s Church Waterloo.
Following the success of our 2024 chamber concert series, we are delighted to continue this partnership with St John’s as the church celebrates its 200th year, bringing audiences closer to the music and showcasing members of the LPO in a more intimate setting.
The first concert, on 23 January 2025, opens with a quintet that Mozart called ‘the best work I have ever written’ in a letter to his father. While the Quintet in E-flat major for Piano and Winds, K452 is, indeed, a work of considerable merit, Mozart’s satisfaction with it may have resulted as much from his skill in solving the technical problems of combining the piano with an unusual collection of wind instruments. When the piece was written in 1784, no one had previously written music for the combination of piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon – why it attracted Mozart at this point remains an unsolved riddle. The concert continues with an adventurous quintet romp: Hindemith’s Kleine Kammermusik for winds, and Grammy-nominated American composer Valerie Coleman’s Tzigane, inspired by Middle Eastern scales and gestures that buzz with a wild, free spirit.
On 22 February 2025, an LPO string trio will bring to life a vivid collection of sonic portraits, featuring the captivating music of Andrew Norman. His Companion Guide to Rome draws inspiration from the grand proportions of the city’s churches, the intricate patterns of their floors, the textures of their surfaces, and the lives and legends of the saints they honour. Continuing this sacred theme, the New London Chamber Choir will join the Orchestra for Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel – a meditative soundscape for chamber choir, solo viola, celeste and percussion, written in tribute to the visionary artist Mark Rothko and the Texas chapel displaying his intriguing black-hued paintings.
7 March 2025 sees The Chamber Sessions foreground works by composers of colour, opening with LPO Composer-in-Residence Tania León’s String Quartet No. 2. This free-form quartet is marked by interactive solos with a ghostly sense of tonality and impressions of gestured improvisations. Jessie Montgomery’s Break Away was born out of a series of improvisations riffing on several different styles of music from hip-hop to electronica. The score calls on the quartet to both play with and ‘break away’ from the score at various points, attempting a seamless dialogue between the written notes and the whims of the players. With an eclectic musical palate and crafty compositional technique to match, Brian Raphael Nabors’s Jump draws from combinations of jazz funk, R&B and gospel, with the modern flair of contemporary classical music. Former LPO Young Composer Daniel Kidane’s Foreign Tongues sees the cello pitted against the other string players, aiming to explore the idea of different languages communicating and interacting with each other. Vera, Hannah Kendall’s brilliant early work, rounds off this concert.
We’re delighted to be back at St John’s Waterloo for its 200th anniversary. This very special space creates an atmosphere where smaller chamber works can have the greatest of effects, with audience and orchestra sharing the musical experience more closely than in a traditional concert hall. It’s exciting to be foregrounding the works of composers of colour as part of the series, as well as presenting varied pieces inspired by the hall’s setting and community.
We are very pleased to welcome back the London Philharmonic Orchestra to our historic Grade II* listed venue for a concert series that brings diverse and imaginative programming to our audiences, with a special focus on contemporary classical music. Now in its 200th year, St John’s Waterloo treasures collaborations like these, which enrich our year-round cultural programme and strengthen our role as a bridge between the local community and the cultural institutions in our area.
The partnership between LPO and St John’s also includes joint Education and Community projects, including accessible participatory musical experiences with the local communities we both serve.
Tickets start from £12.
To book, please visit the LPO website
About the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Uniquely groundbreaking and exhilarating to watch and hear, the London Philharmonic Orchestra has been celebrated as one of the world’s great orchestras since Sir Thomas Beecham founded it in 1932. With every performance we aim to bring wonder to the modern world and cement our position as a leading orchestra for the 21st century. Our home is at the Southbank’s Royal Festival Hall, where we’re at the beating heart of London’s cultural life. You’ll also find us at our resident venues in Brighton, Eastbourne and Saffron Walden, and on tour throughout the UK and internationally, performing to sell-out audiences worldwide. Each summer we’re resident at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and you’ll find us online, on streaming platforms, on social media and through our broadcast partnership with Marquee TV. We also release live, studio and archive recordings on our own label, and are one of the world’s most-streamed orchestras, with over 15 million plays of our content each month.
Our Principal Conductors have included some of the greatest historic names like Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. In 2021 Edward Gardner became our 13th Principal Conductor, and Vladimir Jurowski became Conductor Emeritus in recognition of his impact as Principal Conductor from 2007–21. Karina Canellakis is our current Principal Guest Conductor and Tania León our Composer-in-Residence.
We’re committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians and music-lovers: there’s nothing we love more than seeing the joy of children and families enjoying their first musical moments, and we’re passionate about equipping schools and teachers through schools’ concerts, resources and training. Reflecting our values of collaboration and inclusivity, our OrchLab and Open Sound Ensemble projects offer music-making opportunities for adults and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.
Today’s young instrumentalists are the orchestral members of the future, so we’re committed to offering them opportunities to progress. Our LPO Junior Artists programme is leading the way in creating pathways into the profession for young artists from under-represented communities, and our LPO Young Composers and Foyle Future Firsts schemes support the next generation of professional musicians, bridging the transition from education to professional careers.
For more information, interviews and images, please contact
Georgie Blyth
London Philharmonic Orchestra Press & PR Manager
Email: georgie.blyth@lpo.co.uk
Phone: 07341 007 659
Image: © Lia Vittone Photography
For information on St John’s Waterloo
Euchar Gravina
Email: artisticdirector@stjohnswaterloo.org
Phone: 020 7633 9819
About St John’s Waterloo
St John’s, the church on the IMAX roundabout at Waterloo, is a historic 1824 Grade II* church that reopened in October 2022 after a major restoration by Eric Parry Architects. It is one of the most inclusive churches in London and provides the best new performance, event and meeting spaces on the South Bank, fulfilling its commitment to be here for everyone.
St John’s produces a year-round programme of arts and culture, including the annual Waterloo Festival, and is co-home to the academy-orchestra Southbank Sinfonia. In the past few years, it welcomed renowned international musicians, including Angela Hewitt, Steven Osborne and Doric String Quartet, as well as played host to professional and amateur orchestras. In partnership with prominent human rights organisations and through visual arts and literature, St John’s is also actively engaged with social justice, addressing issues such as press freedom, censorship, homelessness and climate change.
Beyond the arts, St John’s runs the award-winning churchyard garden and a variety of community projects for people experiencing homelessness and isolation as well as local community members for whom life’s challenges are now even more acute.
