Chi-Chi Nwanoku was the only black woman to be a founding member and principal double bassist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for 30 years. Convinced that diversity in classical music needs role models, she founded the revolutionary Chineke! Orchestra, the first orchestra consisting exclusively of black and ethnically diverse musicians, which is now celebrating its Berlin premiere at the Konzerthaus. Its concerts feature classical repertoire and works by black and ethnically diverse composers in equal measure.

Discover Derrick Syke's “Prisms”, which brings together influences from the Balkans, Ghana and Hindu classical music, and the nature-loving spirituality of the “Concerto for Orchestra” by Brian Raphael Nabors, a church musician, keyboardist in an R&B band and classical music professor from the south of the USA. The young British pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, sister of our current Artist in Residence Sheku Kanneh-Mason, will also be making her Konzerthaus debut.