Kensington Symphony Orchestra

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School (St Andrew's Site)
2025-09-11 18:30 - 21:00, 2025-09-18 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-10-23 18:30 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom

String sectional rehearsal at Netley Primary School
2025-09-25 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-11-06 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-02-26 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-04-23 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-06-04 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-09-24 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-11-05 18:30 - 21:30, 2027-01-07 18:30 - 21:30 and 3 more dates | Netley Primary School, 74 Stanhope Street, London, NW1 3EX, United Kingdom

Woodwind sectional rehearsal at Pimlico Academy
2025-09-25 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-11-06 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-02-26 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-04-23 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-06-04 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-09-24 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-11-05 18:30 - 21:30, 2027-01-07 18:30 - 21:30 and 3 more dates | Pimlico Academy, 36 Lupus Street, London, SW1V 3AT, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at Queen's Gate House
2025-09-30 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-10-02 18:30 - 21:30 | MPW Queen’s Gate House, 65 Queen's Gate, London, SW7 5JS

Tutti rehearsal at Henry Wood Hall
2025-10-05 11:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-15 11:00 - 17:00, 2026-10-11 11:00 - 17:00, 2027-05-16 11:00 - 17:00, 2027-07-04 11:00 - 17:00 | Henry Wood Hall, Trinity Church Square, London, SE1 4HU, United Kingdom

Seating rehearsal at Smith Square Hall
2025-10-06 17:30 - 18:30, 2026-03-16 17:30 - 18:30, 2026-10-12 17:30 - 18:30, 2027-01-25 17:30 - 18:30, 2027-05-17 17:30 - 18:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Stravinsky's Firebird
2025-10-06 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
We begin our 2025/26 season with a performance of Stravinsky’s complete ballet The Firebird.
Written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the work – described as “a supreme example of how music can evoke a mood” – catapulted Stravinsky to international fame. Inspired by Russian fairy tales, the ballet follows Prince Ivan, who enlists the help of the magical Firebird to battle the evil Koschei in his castle.
The concert opens with Rodion Shchedrin’s Concerto for Orchestra No.1, ‘Naughty Limericks’ (1963), a virtuosic single-movement work. Impish, humorous and energetic, it incorporates a number of Russian folk tunes.
KSO also performs Martinů’s Les fresques de Piero della Francesca (1955), which pays homage to the Italian artist’s cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross (around 1452-66), an early Renaissance masterpiece that Martinů had admired in the Tuscan town of Arezzo in 1954.

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Grey Coat Place
2025-10-30 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-02-12 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-02-19 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-03-05 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-03-12 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at Bishopsgate Institute
2025-11-09 11:00 - 17:00, 2026-11-08 11:00 - 17:00, 2027-01-24 11:00 - 17:00, 2027-03-14 11:00 - 17:00 | Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 4QH, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street
2025-11-13 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom
E

General rehearsal at Smith Square Hall
2025-11-16 12:00 - 14:00 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Doreen Carwithen, James MacMillan and Ruth Gipps at Smith Square Hall
2025-11-16 15:00 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra performs an all-British programme of music including Ruth Gipps’ Symphony No. 4, a fiery, joyful and quintessentially English work.

Gipps studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams, and her final symphony, written in 1972, was dedicated to fellow composer Arthur Bliss. This quintessentially English work comprises a fiery opening, a delicate Adagio, a playful Scherzo and a joyful Finale. The concert opens with Doreen Carwithen’s Bishop Rock (1952), a “unashamedly theatrical” overture by a composer known for her film scores. The piece pays tribute to Bishop Rock, one of the westernmost of the Isles of Scilly and, thanks to its famous lighthouse, the world’s smallest island with a building on it. KSO also performs James MacMillan’s The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (1990), a requiem for a woman burnt as a witch. Elegiac interludes are punctured by violent outbursts in the work, which incorporates Scottish folk tunes and Gregorian chant, and was rapturously received at its première at the BBC Proms in 1990.

KSO Festive Drinks
2025-12-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Cask Pub & Kitchen, 6 Charlwood Street, London, SW1V 2EE

KSO Festive Curry
2025-12-04 19:30 | Millbank Spice, 34-38 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2RY, United Kingdom

Repertoire Day - Rachmaninov 3
2026-01-18 11:00 - 17:30 | Henry Wood Hall, Trinity Church Square, London, SE1 4HU, United Kingdom

Brahms 3 at Smith Square Hall
2026-03-16 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Smith Square Hall on Monday 16 March, when we are joined by guest conductor Matt Scott Rogers for a performance of Brahms’s Symphony No.3 (1883).
After spending the summer of 1883 writing the work at Wiesbaden, on the Rhine, Brahms played the first and final movements on the piano to Antonín Dvořák, who remarked that his fellow composer had surpassed his previous two symphonies, “if not, perhaps, in grandeur, then certainly in beauty”. Premièred by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter in December of that year, the work was well received, with Richter proclaiming it to be Brahms’s ‘Eroica’.
We also perform Dvořák’s Cello Concerto (1894-95), which was premièred by the English cellist Leo Stern, conducted by the composer, at the Queen’s Hall in London in March 1896. The opening Allegro is followed by a lyrical Adagio, in which Dvořák pays tribute to his seriously ill sister-in-law,and a lively Finale. Having corrected Dvořák’s proofs of the work, Brahms remarked: “If I had known that it was possible to compose such a concerto for the cello, I would have tried it myself!”
The concert opens with Berlioz’s Le corsaire (1844), a dashing overture that imagines the dangers and thrills of life as a pirate, its title suggesting Byron’s poem The Corsair. Dramatic and lyrical, it shares rhythmic energy with the composer’s Le carnaval romain.

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place
2026-04-09 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
6.30 Blacher
7.20 Nielsen
9.00 Grieg

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place
2026-04-16 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
6.30 Blacher
7.00 Nielsen
9.00 Grieg

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place
2026-04-30 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
6.30 Blacher
7.30 Nielsen
9.10 Grieg

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place
2026-05-07 18:30 - 21:30 | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
6.30 Grieg (with soloist) – all rehearsal

Tutti rehearsal at Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street
2026-05-10 11:00 - 17:00 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
11.00 Blacher
1.00 Lunch
2.00 Nielsen (first movement up to Adagio)
2.30 Nielsen (Adagio and second movement)
5.00 Finish

Seating rehearsal Cadogan Hall
2026-05-12 17:30 - 18:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
Rehearsal order
5.30 Grieg
6.00 Nielsen
6.15 Blacher

Nielsen’s Symphony No.5 at Cadogan Hall
2026-05-12 19:30 | Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London, SW1X 9DQ, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Cadogan Hall to perform Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony (1922), likened by the composer to “the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good”.
Alternately explosive and calm, the work features a famous battle between the orchestra and a snare drummer, who is instructed to improvise “as though determined at all costs to stop the progress of the orchestra”.
KSO is joined by former BBC Young Musician keyboard finalist Firoze Madon for Grieg’s much-loved Piano Concerto (1868), written when the composer was just 24. A lyrical Andante is bookended by a dramatic Allegro and an energetic Finale, both featuring motifs influenced by Norwegian folk music.
The concert opens with Boris Blacher’s virtuosic Orchestral Variations on a Theme by N. Paganini (1947), which brought the composer international renown after his work was deemed “degenerate” during the Second World War.

Tutti rehearsal at the Grey Coat Hospital School (Greycoat Place)
2026-05-28 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-06-11 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-06-18 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-09-10 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-09-17 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-10-01 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-10-08 18:30 - 21:30, 2026-10-22 18:30 - 21:30 and 18 more dates | The Grey Coat Hospital School, Greycoat Place SW1P 2DY, St Andrew's Site, Greycoat Place, London, SW1P 2DY, United Kingdom

Tutti rehearsal at Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall (Regency Street)
2026-06-14 11:00 - 17:00 | The Grey Coat Hospital School Sports Hall, Regency Street, St Michael's Site, 98 Regency Street, London, SW1P 4GH, United Kingdom

General rehearsal at Fairfield Halls
2026-06-20 11:30 - 13:45 | Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1DG, United Kingdom

Copland, Bernstein and John Adams at Fairfield Halls
2026-06-20 15:00 | Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1DG, United Kingdom
Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Fairfield Halls with an all-American programme of music featuring John Adams’s Harmonium (1980-81).
The orchestra is joined by Epiphoni Consort for this three-movement work, regarded as one of the key compositions of Adams’s minimalist period. Based on poems by John Donne and Emily Dickinson, it is influenced by the music of Steve Reich and calls for a large orchestra and chorus, including an eclectic percussion section.
The concert opens with Copland’s Billy the Kid (Suite) (1938), taken from the one-act ballet commissioned by the impresario Lincoln Kirstein. One of the composer’s most popular and frequently performed pieces, it incorporates cowboy tunes and American folk songs in its depiction of the passions and dangers of the Wild West.
Music director Russell Keable also leads the orchestra in a performance of Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1960), an orchestral suite in nine movements adapted from the composer’s smash-hit musical, a version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set on New York City’s Upper West Side.

Pimlico Academy Music Tracks rehearsal and concert
2026-07-02 16:30 - 19:30 | Pimlico Academy, 36 Lupus Street, London, SW1V 3AT, United Kingdom

Rachmaninov’s Symphony No.3 at Smith Square Hall
2026-10-12 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

General rehearsal at Queen Elizabeth Hall
2026-11-15 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom

Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Hall
2026-11-15 15:00 | Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX, United Kingdom

Schubert and Bruckner - Unfinished Symphonies at Smith Square Hall
2027-01-25 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

General rehearsal at Barbican Hall
2027-03-15 | Barbican Hall, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS, United Kingdom

Korngold’s Die tote Stadt - KSO's 70th Anniversary Concert
2027-03-15 19:00 | Barbican Hall, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS, United Kingdom

Vaughan Williams 9 at Smith Square Hall
2027-05-17 19:30 | Smith Square Hall, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA, United Kingdom

Seating rehearsal at LSO St Luke's
2027-07-05 17:30 - 18:30 | LSO St Luke’s, 161 Old Street, London, EC1V 9NG, United Kingdom

Sibelius 5 at LSO St Luke's
2027-07-05 19:30 | LSO St Luke’s, 161 Old Street, London, EC1V 9NG, United Kingdom
