Wigmore Hall Trust

My guest today is Rebecca Omordia, an award-winning pianist and curator, internationally recognized as a classical music game changer by Classical Music Magazine.

Rebecca is the founder and artistic director of the African Concert Series, a platform dedicated to African classical music, resident at Wigmore Hall in London.

In this conversation, Rebecca tells me about growing up in Romania, where she won a prestigious national music competition at the age of 12.

We also talk about her time touring with the British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, and how she spent years convincing record labels and concert organizers that African classical music belonged on the world stage.

And it was very powerful because people that maybe, uh, until then would have not paid notice to the work that we're doing, they finally understood the importance of the work of the African Concert Series.

And the next year I applied for funding and, uh, the Arts Council, uh, 2021 awarded, uh, the African Concert Series the very first grant.

Uh, that was also the time when Wigmore Hall, uh, director John Gilhooly approached me because he'd learned about the work that was in the African Concert Series since we were reaching, we were reaching audience.

I think our series even reached a million people.

In the end, Frozen Arrows turns full circle and ends on a literally happy note.

Last summer, together with my wife and fellow cellist Jia Xing, I was planning the programme for my 75th birthday concert, which was held earlier this year at the Wigmore Hall.

The concert was in aid of a wonderful charity called Music Masters, which provides access to music for young people from all backgrounds.

Having not played for 12 years, there was never any idea that I would play in the concert myself.

Hello, I'm Ian Skelly, and welcome to the first episode of the Wigmore Hall podcast for the 2026-27 season.

This month, we're delighted to share a conversation with the mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and Suleiman Suleiman, who'll be bringing their project Kabuki Winterizer Spring Snow to Wigmore Hall on Sunday 11th October.

It's a meditation on sound, silence, solitude and communion, on love and loss, and it intertwines the narratives of Yasuna, which is one of the great kabuki plays dating back to 1818, and Schubert's iconic Winterreise conceived a decade later in 1827.

Grief splinters the feelings of both Schubert's Wanderer and Yasuna, prompting them to make their journeys into the darkness and into the depths of the self.

Well, in this conversation and in the performance, Fleur and Suleiman explore their own experiences of grief alongside the music.

So, over to Suleiman to tell us more about this very exciting project.

Hello, my name is Suleiman Suleiman and I'm here with Fleur Baron, the co-creator of our Spring Snow Kabuki Vinteriser project, which will take place at Wigmore Hall on the 11th of October.

So I guess we could start at the very beginning.

You can still get walk-up tickets and cheap tickets.

We've got Vikinger Olufsen at Wigmore Hall, September 11th and 12th, three nights from the Icelandic Pianist in London's finest small music hall.

San Francisco Ballet, Mere Mortals at Sadler Wells, September 9th to the 12th, a rare London from St.

The American Company and Good Kid at the Roundhouse on September 26th.

There are many.

One of my favorites is the Wigmore Hall in London.

Of course, to play Carnegie Hall is always, you know, it's an incredible experience.

But even the little theater that we're running a concert series here, um in eastern maryland it's a it's a beautiful um redone um reformed you know little church and now it's it's just a gorgeous little theater with a gorgeous time with the hamburg piano that i selected in hamburg and the greatest greatest artists from the world come and play in this little theater in the series and that's also one of my favorite places

Twenty years after their first recorded collaboration, Gomez and Constable were still putting out amazing recordings and giving stunning live performances.

The Telegraph obituary comments upon recitals that the pair would give at Wigmore Hall.

One of their most beguiling recordings comes from the year 1994, a release called A Spanish Songbook, which, true to its name, does include songs by Spanish composers, but also by artists.

composers of other nationalities, channeling the spirit, if you will, of Spain.

As a concert soloist, she's recorded at Abbey Road Studios with the London Symphony, and she's recorded over 20 albums.

She's performed in Europe, Asia, Australia, and The US, including at Wigmore Hall, Jubilee Hall in Singapore, and the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.

And as an educator, she is a professor at the University of Central Oklahoma.

And in the middle or thereabouts, Tess and I are gonna do what I call a songfest.

And I'm so thrilled to welcome to the podcast today the phenomenal pianist Beatrice Nicholas.

She's a concert pianist and composer that's performed everywhere from Wigmore Hall in the Southbank Centre to 10 Downing Street.

She's a champion of diversity in classical music, blending her classical training with a multitude of different genres to bring new audiences into the concert hall.

And today we're talking about her incredible journey and career in music so far, and about her upcoming show at the very famous jazz club Ronnie Scott's, where she'll be celebrating 1930s African American women composers like Hazel Scott, Lil Hardin Armstrong, Florence Price, and Margaret Bonds.