Nigel Kennedy and Cleveland Watkiss announce line-up for their ‘Concert for Justice, Peace, Acceptance and Forgiveness’ at Barbican

Revered violinist Nigel Kennedy and multi-award winning singer Cleveland Watkiss will headline the Barbican for a special evening under the banner of a ‘Concert for Justice, Peace, Acceptance and Forgiveness’ and have written some material specially for the show. They will be joined by a simpatico band of Alec Dankworth (son of John Dankworth and Cleo Laine on bass), Ed Richardson (drums) and Beata Urbanek-Kalinowska (cello).

Kennedy has long been acknowledged as one of the world’s leading violin virtuosos and he is arguably the most important violinist Britain has ever produced. He is a rare artist, capable of popularising all types of sophisticated music without ever compromising its quality or artistic integrity. While he approaches music with great seriousness, for Kennedy, serious in music does not have to equal solemn.

Kennedy’s passion for improvised music has resulted in a number of jazz recordings, most notably the album Blue Note Sessions (2006), made with Grammy award winning producer, Jay Newland, featuring a band of jazz giants such as Jack DeJohnette, Ron Carter, Joe Lovano, Lucky Petersen and Kenny Werner. Subsequently Kennedy has recorded an album of his own arrangements of music by Gershwin as well as albums of original compositions with his Polish jazz quintet.

Cleveland Watkiss is a Multidisciplinary British artist of Jamaican descent, among his many achievements are numerous awards recognising his vocal virtuosity while he also works as an actor, composer, DJ, and voice professor at Trinity Laban Music And Dance Conservatoire. A recent winner of the 2021 Ivors Composer Award For Innovation, Watkiss’s impact and legacy is felt strongly across an extremely broad spectrum of musical genres.

For more info and tickets visit www.barbican.org.uk