Mixed Race Studies

Chi-chi Nwanoku: ‘I want black musicians to walk on to the stage and know they belong’

The Guardian
2015-06-02

Chi-chi Nwanoku

Chi-chi Nwanoku: ‘I feel sure that bringing a group of people together to play incredible music is a creatively powerful and positive thing.’ Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi

For 30 years, double bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku has enjoyed a successful career and as a classical musician and never felt the colour of her skin has held her back. So why is she now embarking on and ambitious plan to form Europe’s first professional black orchestra? She explains all

Perhaps I was one of the lucky ones? I somehow slipped through the net. I’m a classical musician, an all too rare black face on concert platforms among what are usually all-white orchestras. My Nigerian father and Irish mother brought me up believing that I could do anything I wanted. They never doubted me for a second, and I was surrounded by people who supported and encouraged me.

We were the only black family at my primary and secondary schools, and I didn’t think at all about being the only black student at the Royal Academy of Music…

Read the entire article here.

NEW TO YOUTUBE | Chineke! – Europe’s First Black Orchestra Concert Debut [VIDEO]

The Violin Channel
2015-09-15

Debut concert performance of the Chineke! Orchestra – Europe’s first professional orchestra made up entirely of musicians of colour.

The 60-piece ensemble, founded by British double bassist Chichi Nwanoku, was established with the objective of making a conscious effort to redress the racial balance in classical music.

Programme includes: Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, Brahms ‘Variations on a theme by Haydn’, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Ballade for Orchestra’ and Philip Herbert’s ‘Elegy’ [a memorial to Stephen Lawrence].

Recorded live at London’s Southbank Centre, 13th September 2015 – as part of the ‘Africa Utopia Festival’.

First black and minority ethnic orchestra to make debut

BBC News
2015-09-11

Lizo Mzimba

Europe’s first professional orchestra consisting entirely of black and minority ethnic musicians will make its debut this weekend at the Southbank Centre in London.

The Chineke orchestra has been created to promote diversity in a musical world that is predominantly white.

Lizo Mzimba reports from one of its final rehearsals.

Watch the story here.

Chineke! Europe’s first professional orchestra of black and minority ethnic musicians launches

The Independent
2015-09-02

Jessica Duchen

Its founder double-bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku talks to Jessica Duchen

When the Chineke! Orchestra steps on to the Queen Elizabeth Hall platform on 13 September, the audience should notice something unusual. One of those uncomfortable truths about classical music is that most symphony orchestras in Europe still consist mostly of white and white-Asian people. Chineke, the brainchild of the double-bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku, is Europe’s first professional orchestra made up entirely of black and minority ethnic musicians.

The idea is to bring together and showcase the wealth of talent among these under-represented performers. “It is about raising awareness, trying to level the playing field, altering the status quo a little bit and changing perceptions,” says Nwanoku.

Born in London to a Nigerian father and Irish mother, Nwanoku has been mulling over these issues for years, from her vantage point as a founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a popular media commentator and broadcaster, and a professor at the Royal Academy of Music. Her recent programmes for BBC Radio 4, In Search of the Black Mozart, about the 18th-century violin virtuoso and composer the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, sparked wide interest in historical musicians of colour…

Read the entire article here.