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Unclassified Live: Nwando Ebizie, Divide and Dissolve and Bill Ryder-Jones

Elizabeth Alker presents the latest Unclassified Live concert from London’s Southbank Centre, with three guest artists performing music with the ѿý Concert Orchestra.

Join Elizabeth Alker at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank for an evening of genre-defying musical collaboration featuring new commissions and arrangements from Divide and Dissolve, Nwando Ebizie and Bill Ryder-Jones, all performed with the ѿý Concert Orchestra under the baton of André de Ridder.

Bill Ryder-Jones is one of England's most distinctive musical voices, blending a boldness of approach and unbending curiosity with a deeply human intimacy. Having gained major success as a founding member of Liverpool band The Coral, his solo career - featuring albums such as ‘Yawn’, ‘West Kirkby County Primary’ and last year’s ‘Iechyd Da’ - has allowed the multi-instrumentalist to find ways of combining his deeply felt pop sensibility with an ever-increasing fascination with classical and experimental music.

Divide and Dissolve is a doom metal band founded by Melbourne’s Takiaya Reed, who recently appeared in the Unclassified Listening Chair. She is a classically-trained saxophonist and guitarist playing music that is often heavy in tone and driven by a fiercely political edge. It is, she says proudly, genreless - so playing new arrangements with the ѿý Concert Orchestra is a very natural fit.

Nwando Ebizie is a brilliantly original performer and composer whose music inhabits liminal and mythic spaces, using “art personas, experimental theatre, neuroscience, music and African diasporic ritualistic dance” to encourage audiences to question their perceptions around reality. She has taken her entirely unclassifiable blend of Afro-futurism, ritual and science fiction around the world and is sure to light up the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Produced by Geoff Bird
A Reduced Listening production for ѿý Radio 3

To listen on most smart speakers just say “ask ѿý Sounds to play Unclassified”

1 hour

Last on

Sun 2 Feb 2025 23:30

Music Played

  • Nwando Ebizie

    Solve et Coagula

    Performer: Nwando Ebizie. Music Arranger: Mark Knoop. Conductor: André de Ridder. Ensemble: ѿý Concert Orchestra.
    • Unclassified Live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, 23rd January 2025.
  • Takiaya Reed

    Symphony No. 1, Your hands taught me what it is to feel love for the first time

    Orchestrator: Fiona Brice. Ensemble: Divide and Dissolve. Conductor: André de Ridder. Ensemble: ѿý Concert Orchestra.
    • Unclassified Live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, 23rd January 2025.
  • Bill Ryder-Jones

    Iechyd Da Suite

    Performer: Bill Ryder-Jones. Music Arranger: Jacob Downs. Ensemble: ѿý Concert Orchestra. Conductor: André de Ridder.
    • Unclassified Live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, 23rd January 2025.

Broadcast

  • Sun 2 Feb 2025 23:30

What is unclassified music?

What is unclassified music?

Elizabeth Alker introduces five of her favourite 'unclassifiable' pieces of music.