SUMMER PROGRAMME at Trinity Laban

An amazing array of public performances is on offer in this year’s Trinity Laban summer programme - legendary names in dance, beloved Broadway shows, internationally acclaimed musicians, revelatory opera, groundbreaking new creations, world premieres and even a star turn at one of the top outdoor festivals.

And many are free, including the lunchtime recitals held at the Old Royal Naval College chapel most Tuesdays and Fridays and at nearby St Alfege’s nearly every Thursday. Highlights include the marvellous Carducci Quartet at the parish church on 26 April and new work by composer Althea Talbot-Howard at ORNC on 30 June.

The season gets properly underway in May with two nights of original choreography by second-year dance students at the Laban theatre in Creekside on the 9th and 10th. Also on the 10th, Trinity students will join veteran choir The Befrienders at King Charles Court to mark ten years of Inspired Not Tired, a TL initiative for the over-60s.

On the 12th, Trinity’s Wind Ensembles and Sinfonia Strings will be performing Handel’s adored Water Music at Blackheath Halls. And the same venue will host the Changemaker Festival, a celebratory showcase for Music Performance & Industry students on the 26th and 27th.

Meanwhile, the Albany is staging two Broadway musicals based on blockbuster movies which are being put on by conservatoire youngsters – the cult horror story Carrie on the 20th and 21st and Footloose on the 27th and 28th.

Dance at Laban in June opens with a third-year showcase of live performance, film and installations on the 18th followed by BA2’s Dance Legends on the 30th as well as 1 July which features choreography by Studio Wayne McGregor, Rosemary Butcher, Nigel Charnock and Protima Chatterjee.

On top of that, Trinity Laban dancers will join hundreds of Lewisham youngsters at Mountfield Park, Catford, on the 18th to take part in Hope For Justice, a climate emergency event led by ace composer Eska, award-winning poet Cecilia Knapp and TL-trained choreographer Sarah Golding.

Keyboard fans are in for a treat on the 20th and 21st when they can see the New Lights Contemporary Piano Festival which ends with an interactive improvisation over multiple sites.

Andrew Lippa’s magical musical Big Fish is at Blackheath Halls from the 20th to the 25th, while acclaimed singer and composer Amritha Suresh presents a recital of folk and classical music from the sub-continent in An Indian Soirée at the Old Royal Naval College chapel on the 21st.

On the 28th Trinity Laban Symphony Orchestra play works by Beethoven and Vaughan Williams at London’s prestigious Cadogan Hall and two days later at St Alfege’s composer Althea Talbot-Howard premieres her latest work along with new realisations of pieces by Sancho, Coleridge-Taylor and Chevalier de Saint-George in a recital that’s part of the conservatoire’s important Black Culture 365 project.

July opens operatically at Blackheath Halls on the 7th with Strozzi! which tells the extraordinary story of 17th Century Venetian composer Barbara Strozzi (pictured) using her own music and a libretto by director Jennifer Hamilton. It runs till the 9th.

The month offers more treasure for dance-lovers, with commissioned works for third-year students by Divya Kasturi, Charles Linehan, Heidi Rustgard and Stephanie Schober on the 14th and 15th followed by graduate showcases which take place in the Laban building and at the Laurie Grove campus in New Cross from the 18th to the 22nd and again from the 25th to the 29th.

Finally, TL string players led by viola virtuoso Nic Pendlebury will be appearing at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk on the 22nd to perform A Change Of Season, a stunning double bill inspired by the global warming crisis which contrasts Vivaldi’s glorious Four Seasons with Trinity alum Hollie Harding’s gorgeous Melting, Shifting, Liquid World. As anyone who saw this event at the National Maritime Museum in March will tell you, it’s an unmissable joy.

Full details of all the shows at https://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/whats-on