Cassie Kinoshi, the Mercury Prize-nominated (2019) and Ivors Academy Award-winning (2018) Berlin/London-based composer, arranger, and alto-saxophonist is returning to London’s Barbican in 2024. A special show will be performed for International Women’s Day on 7 March 2024
With a focus on creating multi-disciplinary and genre-blending performances, she returns alongside her ten-piece ensemble SEED. With award-winning turntablist NikNak and the London Contemporary Orchestra, revisiting her 2023 piece Gratitude and the premiere of a brand new composition.
In the development of British jazz, the wartime period played a significant role, with its legacy still being felt today. The interwar period saw an emergence of all-female bands in the jazz and dance-band circuit, following the outbreak of war, when music became an employment and income source for women. Standing in for male musicians, some wonderful big bands such as ‘Hilda Ward’s Lady Syncopators’ and ‘Evelyn Hardy & Her Ladies Band’ emerged. With academic input from Liverpool University Musicologist Prof. Catherine Tackley supporting the research, Cassie Kinoshi takes inspiration from this era and draws from her personal experience as a Black British female composer and bandleader operating in the UK’s contemporary music landscape. Alongside the live performance, there will be a panel discussion and a Q&A session between Prof. Catherine Tackley and Cassie Kinoshi exploring these times and more.
The new composition is co-commissioned by Serious and 14-18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the First World War centenary, with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Look out for updates on the event via The Barbican website
Cassie Kinoshi image by Aurore Fouchez Source/Image provided courtesy of Practice Music
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