The people’s concert hall?

The people’s concert hall?

News

norman lebrecht

April 12, 2022

This is what London’s Southbank Centre, built by public subscription, is putting on for the Queen’s platinum jubilee in June:

Highlights for the Southbank Centre’s Jubilee festivities include:

Musical celebrations from Nu Civilisation Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
A day exploring how punk exploded into popular culture in 1977, the year of the Silver Jubilee, including an exclusive screening and panel discussion with Academy Award®-winner Danny Boyle on his new Sex Pistols series, Pistol
LGBTQI+ club Duckie presents the daytime “Official” and late night “Alternative” Royal Command Performances
Fun-filled performances for all the family with Moxie Brawl’s Punk Alley, Half Moon’s Party and Folk Dance Remixed’s Step Hop House

The Southbank Centre today announces a programme to mark Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Taking place across Wednesday 1 – Sunday 5 June 2022, the Southbank Centre’s eclectic programme of Jubilee events encompasses both “Official” and “Alternative” Royal Command Performances alongside classical music, punk, dance, performance and parties, to appeal to diverse and wide-ranging audiences. The Southbank Centre also presents an exclusive live screening of Academy Award®-winner Danny Boyle’s new series Pistol, which charts the rise of the Sex Pistols and the punk revolution in Britain, as well as a panel discussion with Danny Boyle about the series, the punk movement’s explosion in the summer of ‘77 and its enduring legacy.

Mark Ball, the Southbank Centre’s Artistic Director, said: “We’re marking Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with a range of events across a multitude of art forms with wide-ranging appeal – from the jazz of Duke Ellington’s The Queens Suite, to exploring punk and the clash of cultures at the time of the Silver Jubilee, to re-imagined folk-dance and a party for 2-5-year-olds. We wanted our Jubilee to be an open programme – for anyone of any age, background or cultural interest to be inspired to attend and to celebrate the long weekend.”

ROYAL MUSICAL CELEBRATIONS
To mark the occasion, musical celebrations take place across the Southbank Centre’s Jubilee weekend. Nu Civilisation Orchestra, presented by Tomorrow’s Warriors, perform a selection of Duke Ellington’s compositions in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 3 June, including The Queen’s Suite, which was inspired by Ellington’s meeting with Her Majesty The Queen in 1958. BBC Radio 2 and the BBC Concert Orchestra present a concert on 1 June in the Queen Elizabeth Hall of distinctly royal music from the big and small screen, including soundtracks from The King’s Speech, The King and I, The Last Emperor and The Queen. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Choral Society and The Bach Choir also honour the Jubilee with a celebratory concert, presented by BBC Radio 3’s Katie Derham, in the Royal Festival Hall on 4 June.

The Southbank Centre also presents a right royal knees up on Friday 3 June from London’s most glamorous daytime club, The Posh Club – a performance, dance and social club for older people created by the LGBTQI+ club Duckie. The “Official” Royal Command Performance for The Posh Club takes place in the daytime in the Clore Ballroom, hosted by Prince Azara, Lady in Waiting Rhys’ Pieces and a grand line-up of cabaret acts including Black Elvis, TBone, Kate Conway and the Posh Club Dance Club for an aristocratic afternoon tea dance. Later into the night, Duckie presents The “Alternative” Royal Command Performance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer. The line-up includes Marie Lloyd, Travis Alabanza, Midgette Bardot, Thick & Tight, Vidya Patel, Lasana Shabazz, DJs Readers Wifes, along with (just out of retirement) the Bloolips performance legend Bette Bourne as HRH The Queen.

Comments

  • Jimmy Herf says:

    Who are the ‘people’ this excludes? Something there for all tastes and shades of opinion, I’d say.

    • John Borstlap says:

      The point is, that this is a product of the egalitarian world view: all things are equal, all cultural expressions have the same worth, quality questions are inappropriate: it is entertainment value that counts. Because there is nothing else in the world that matters. It is a mindset wherein all potential meaning has disappeared in the void of titilating the senses, to distract from reality. That’s OK, but for a building which was set-up for The Arts, no less, it has a symbolic meaning which probably has escaped the programmers entirely.

  • Fightback of the silent majority says:

    Absolutely disgusting politicisation of a great national occasion; what an appaling insult to Her Majesty and her 70 Glorious Years of service and sacrifice to the peoples of her nation, empire and commonwealth.

    The homosexual remoniac mob have clearly been at work again substituting our true musical heritage for “Duckie” and “Tomorrow’s Warriors”. Of course the Corbynites who run the Southbank don’t have a shred of pride in Her Majesty or her great armed forces’ work ruling the waves; they don’t want to give any of us true Brits the chance to swell with patriotic pride as we sing Pomp & Circumstance, Land of Hope and Glory, Jerusalem, Rule Britannia, I vow to thee my country etc…

    Orff with their woke “LGBT+” heads, I say! And in the meanwhile one hopes one will be able to find SOMEWHERE where one can sing with heart and voice ‘God Save the Queen’.

  • BigSir says:

    At least there are still orchestra concerts. Some outdoor venues are overwhelmingly programming 50 year old pop/rock/country groups, for example, Wolf Trap.

  • Paul Johnson says:

    70 years of glorious service? Jerusalem? The UK a green a pleasant land?

    • Terence says:

      Try living in South Sudan, or Niger or … [there’s a very long list].

      You don’t know when your well off, even if the UK isn’t perfect.

      • Allen says:

        Come on, Terence, I’m sure you know perfectly well that positive comments from the middle class are socially unacceptable.

        Working class oiks, on the other hand, are expected to come out with that sort of thing.

  • PaulD says:

    I think the Queen will take a pass from these events and just have some tea while streaming her favorite British films.

    • John Borstlap says:

      An uncle of mine who serves at the palace told me last week that she watches Monty Python series nowadays behind closed doors, from which a high-pitched heartily laugh regularly penetrates the panelling, to the enjoyment of staff in the corridors.

      Sally

  • Greg Bottini says:

    Sounds like a hell of a good lineup to me.

  • Steve says:

    Surely the construction of the South Bank Centre was paid for from the public purse (initially the LCC, later the GLC) which is not the same as public subscription (which would describe the financing of the Royal Albert Hall)?

  • Working class peasant says:

    I’m gay and working class, and I think this is a load of absolute s h i t. Why can’t they put on real music, not banal tripe? If it has to be mostly English and also popular, then do some Handel, which would actually be more popular with us unwashed peasants than this heap of bollocks.

  • Player says:

    Is this using the jubilee to flog some rather dubious acts and artists? I

    I’m sure that in there somewhere there will be a dignified musical celebration of the Queen and royalty, but you would be hard pressed to identify it amid the noise and the gush.

    Maybe Hugh Kerr MEP will be on hand to give us one of his reports from the South Bank lavatories?

  • Orlando says:

    Duke Ellington’s Queens Suite is a 20th century masterpiece

  • MOST READ TODAY: