BBC Concert Orchestra 2025-2026 Friday Night is Music Night: A Jazz Celebration

A nightingale sang…jazz sensations Fiona Monbet and Emma Rawicz join the BBC Concert Orchestra as Friday Night is Music Night sings (and swings) like a bird.

When lovers meet in Mayfair, songbirds sing. That’s how the song goes, anyway; and here at Ally Pally, there’s always music in the air – especially with Friday Night is Music Night! Tonight, the BBC Concert Orchestra, conductor and jazz violinist Fiona Monbet and the sax sensation that is Emma Rawicz (a former BBC New Young Generation Artist) soar with the birds in a swinging, singing, jazz-flavoured celebration.

In tonight’s programme we’ll hear urban nightingales; we’ll glide with Tchaikovsky’s enchanted swans and ascend like a lark – as Emma Rawicz plays her own version of Vaughan Williams’s much-loved masterpiece on saxophone. We’ll also hear something brand new with a BBC Radio 3 commission written by Rawicz. And because birds of a feather flock together, Rawicz and Monbet join the full orchestra in a series of brand-new collaborations, including Dave Holland’s joyous Conference of the Birds. Join them, and let your imagination take flight.

Programme to include:

Manning Sherwin arr. Peter Hope - A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
Charlie Parker - Autumn in New York; Everything Happens to Me
Emma Rawicz - New work for saxophone and orchestra
Haydn Wood - London Landmarks Suite: Movement 1, 'Trafalgar Square'
Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending (arranged for saxophone and orchestra)
Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake - finale
Dave Holland - Conference of the Bird