When Chi-chi Nwanoku, double bass virtuoso and professor at the Royal Academy  of Music, set out to assemble an orchestra made up of  superb classical musicians who were also people of colour, she had no idea where to begin or if such a group even existed. But they do and she did, and the result is the incomparable Chineke! Orchestra (CHIN-neck-ay), comprising of a majority of Black and visible minority  classical musicians representing 35 nationalities.

In their highly anticipated Canadian debut, Chineke! Orchestra performs with Canada’s own Stewart Goodyear, composer and piano superstar. The vibrant and exciting Callaloo is the fulfillment of Goodyear’s dream to compose a work that marries the music of the classical and Calypso worlds.

With conductor Kevin John Edusei, one of today’s most sought-after talents, Chineke! Orchestra also performs Brahms’s pastoral Symphony No. 2, the most cheerful of Brahms’s mature works and his own personal favourite, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s stunningly beautiful Ballade for Orchestra .

Chineke! Orchestra’s only Canadian date will come hot on the heels of their debut at Walt Disney Hall (Los Angeles), San Francisco Symphony Hall, and the Kennedy Center (Washington).