Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In 2015, the double bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku founded Chineke!, Europe’s first majority Black and minority ethnic orchestra. She thought it might only last one concert, but a decade later Chineke! is still here and celebrating its 10th anniversary.In the early days there were people who argued that an orchestra limited to players from ethnic minorities was not the way to achieve diversity, but Nwanoku’s answer to that was clear: “We have waited 400 years! There was no sign of anything happening.” Now Chineke! is a resident orchestra at the Southbank Centre and has played at the BBC Proms, the Lucerne Festival and Lincoln Center, New York, to name but three. One of the orchestra’s proudest aims is that it not only furthers the careers of young musicians, but also promotes Black composers, past, present and future. Over 10 years almost every concert has widened the repertoire by performing a previously neglected composer or newly commissioned work.All this was on show at this anniversary concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where the ensemble debuted in 2015. As Chineke! is not a permanent orchestra, it is difficult to keep the standard of playing consistent from one concert to the next. This was not one of the best, but that did not stop celebratory ovations along the way.In advance, the main attraction had looked to be a performance of the 2020 suite Song of the Prophets: A Requiem for the Climate, commissioned for the orchestra. Each of the four movements was written by a different composer — Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Daniel Kidane, Shirley J Thompson and Roderick Williams — but it seems the composers were given a five-minute limit and their contributions, though nicely turned, did not add up to much. The other works on the programme, all recent, were more entertaining. Julian Joseph, interviewed on stage, told how Nwanoku had asked him to write something “jazzy” for Chineke!. The result was the foot-tapping Carry That Sound, which throws in a dash of Hollywood schmaltz and a variety of blues — good fun, though it ended too soon.It is easy to see why Roderick Williams was inspired by the vivid, rhythmical poems of Chris Beckett, which draw on the poet’s childhood in Ethiopia. Williams’s cheery and sunburnt settings — 3 Songs from Ethiopia Boy — were pregnant with atmosphere. As a noted baritone, he sang them himself, though it was a shame the orchestra sometimes covered the words.In a more serious vein, Kidane’s Dream Song set a text that weaves in and out of Martin Luther King Jr’s historic “I have a dream” speech to edgy music. Alongside, James B Wilson’s Free-man paid tribute to the Black community leaders of the Bristol bus boycott of 1963, which was coincidentally settled on the day that King was making his speech in Washington. Its sustained elegy, an oasis of deep feeling, was the outstanding music of the evening.★★★☆☆southbankcentre.co.uk
