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| Brixton Chamber Orchestra & Matthew O’Keeffe at Stockwell Park Property Neighborhood Belief |
Final night time (Sunday 21 December 2025), Brixton Chamber Orchestra‘s Christmas Estates Tour 2025 got here to an finish at Stockwell Park Property Neighborhood Belief, the final of 11 free gigs to venues that included neighborhood halls throughout the borough in addition to the historic Streatham Place Theatre. Below its director Matthew O’Keeffe, the orchestra carried out an eclectic 70-minute set to a packed home, which was standing room solely.
We started in pretty sedate type with O’Keeffe’s association of O Tannenbaum, earlier than the orchestra launched into a really creditable account of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, sounding remarkably vivid within the relative confines of the Neighborhood Belief’s corridor.
Then, simply to show up the warmth, they moved into the Lover’s Rock Megamix, a vigorous medley created by orchestra member Lewis Daniel that featured Marcia Aitken’s I’m Nonetheless In Love, Ken Boothe’s Every little thing I Personal, Carroll Thompson’s I’m So Sorry, and Chronixx’s Skankin Candy. Tunes that positively had the viewers buzzing alongside. One thing of the Christmas theme continued with music from the movie Dwelling Alone, John Williams’s music Someplace in my Reminiscence, which even had the orchestra members singing alongside at one level.
One of many orchestra’s common members is jazz-bass participant and composer Misha Mullov-Abbado, he could not make the gig, however the orchestra performed his new piece Donna Margerella. Impressed by two native characters, it introduced the musical type vividly into the current. And simply to indicate that the orchestra’s style is really eclectic, the night additionally included a pleasant quick piece by Elgar, The Valentine from music he wrote for dances at his native lunatic asylum.
We had two very contrasting vocalists. First off, a feminine vocalist gave us slow-jazz-infused model of Adolphe Adam’s O Holy Evening, plus Huge Assault’s Paradise Circus. Then rapper Martian B2A joined them for among the orchestra’s speciality, Grime Orchestrated, on this case his new monitor Goldeneye. And listening to the music carried out like this, with full orchestral backing is kind of one thing. On the finish of the set, there was an open mic session when Martian B2A was joined by a gaggle of different rappers who introduced the corridor alive.
The ultimate songs all had everybody dancing, actually or metaphorically, with O’Keeffe’s preparations of Celia Cruz’s La Vida es un Carnaval and Daryl McKenzie’s Merry Christmas Everybody. Mullov-Abbado’s association of Jocelyn Brown’s Any individual Else’s Man introduced the set to an in depth, although I received the impression that everybody actually needed the social gathering to proceed.
