Strange News

The London Sinfonietta fuses the finest contemporary music with audio-visuals and performing arts to offer a window onto conflicts past and present.

In an unflinching tale of hope and redemption, Rolf Wallin and Josse de Pauw's Strange News brings the reality of life for the world’s 250,000 child soldiers into the concert hall. Rolf Wallin's moving orchestral score weaves music with Josse de Pauw's video footage and the words of former young fighters performed live on stage by Ugandan actor Arthur Kisenyi. An on-screen cameo by well-known journalist and presenter Jon Snow completes this powerful piece of concert theatre.

The Exaudi singers join the London Sinfonietta in the concert’s first half to explore two contemporary insights into violent moments in history. Michael Finnissy sets surviving accounts of an Anglo-Saxon war saga to his haunting modern sound in a rare live performance of Maldon.

Iannis Xenakis’s Nuits is a modern take on a classical Greek tragedy dedicated to 1960s political prisoners in his native Greece.

Join London Sinfonietta for Strange News for music that gets to the heart of the world’s most emotive issues.

6.15pm
Take Note: Pre-concert discussion

Rolf Wallin joins a panel to discuss the place of music in developing our awareness of world issues.

Go to the Strange News website for more information about how this work was developed, plus video footage of the world premiere of the full orchestral version by the Olso Philharmonic Orchestra.