In the year of the Wigmore Hall’s 120th anniversary, Artistic Director, John Gilhooly has announced that the African Concert Series, spearheaded by the Nigerian-Romanian pianist Rebeca Omordia will be joining the Wigmore Hall’s family of partners. This is an enormous tribute to Rebeca, whose inspiring leadership over the last three years, has brought together brilliant talents from the wide diaspora of African art music, which forms a bridge between Western classical music and traditional African music. Her early CD ‘Ekele’ for Heritage, featuring the piano music of a number of composers from Nigeria, including Ayo Bankole, Fred Onovwerosuoke and Christian Onyeji, proved a hit and prefigured the success of the concert series.
Rebeca Omordia is an award-winning pianist of Nigerian-Romanian heritage, being born and raised in Romania during the Ceaușescu regime. After graduating from the National Music University in Bucharest in 2006 she came to this country with a scholarship to study for a Masters at Birmingham Conservatoire, where she won the Delius Prize. It was here that she met up with Julian Lloyd Webber and soon began a very successful partnership with him from 2012 till 2014, performing together at Wigmore Hall and Kings Place.
She also collaborated with cellists Raphael Wallfisch, Jiaxin Lloyd Webber and Razvan Suma (with whom she toured the UK and Romania), Chineke!, saxophonist Amy Dickson and pianist Mark Bebbington with whom she recorded piano music by Ralph Vaughan Williams for two pianos, which reached no. 3 in the UK Classical Music Chart.
Antony Barlow, Press and PR
No comments:
Post a Comment