Chineke! Orchestra, Roderick Cox, Leslie Suganandarajah (feat. Jeneba Kanneh-Mason)
Biography Chineke! Orchestra, Roderick Cox, Leslie Suganandarajah (feat. Jeneba Kanneh-Mason)
The Chineke!
Foundation was established in 2015 to provide career opportunities to young Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) classical musicians in the UK and Europe. Chineke!’s motto is: ‘Championing change and celebrating diversity in classical music’. The organisation aims to be a catalyst for change, realising existing diversity targets within the industry by increasing the representation of BME musicians in British and European orchestras.
The Foundation’s flagship ensemble, the Chineke! Orchestra, comprises exceptional musicians from across the continent brought together multiple times per year. As Europe’s first majority-BME orchestra, the Chineke! Orchestra performs a mixture of standard orchestral repertoire along with the works of BME composers both past and present.
The Chineke! Orchestra works closely with its sister ensemble, the Chineke! Junior Orchestra, a youth orchestra of BME players aged 11-18, with senior players acting as mentors, teachers and role models to the young musicians. With many of our junior musicians already benefitting from several existing youth schemes, junior music colleges and specialist music schools across the UK, the Chineke! Junior Orchestra acts as a bridge between such schemes and higher education, giving its players experience, encouragement and confidence during their formative years, with the hope of increasing the numbers of BME candidates currently studying music at third level. This process has already begun, with several of the junior musicians having won national competitions, gained places at top music schools or been admitted to study at elite third level institutions.
Chineke! is the brainchild of Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE, who has this say about the project: ‘My aim is to create a space where BME musicians can walk on stage and know that they belong, in every sense of the word. If even one BME child feels that their colour is getting in the way of their musical ambitions, then I hope to inspire them, give them a platform, and show them that music, of whatever kind, is for all people.’
Many cultural organisations such as the BBC, Association of British Orchestras, Royal Philharmionic Society and Arts Council England agree with this sentiment, and have supported Chineke! After its launch concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in September of 2015, the Chineke! Orchestra was appointed as an Associate Orchestra of the Southbank Centre, and returned there to perform in September of 2016 at the Royal Festival Hall. After a sold-out debut at St George’s Bristol in April 2017, the Chineke! Orchestra has an exciting series of concerts lined up for the coming year, including appearances at the Brighton, Cheltenham and Salisbury Festivals, a return to the Royal Festival Hall, overseas tours to Ghent and Rotterdam, and an engagement at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms.
Chineke! has been covered extensively by national and international press and broadcast media, most recently by the New York Times, and the Foundation’s work is featured prominently in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s White Paper on Culture published in March 2016. The Chineke! Orchestra has been shortlisted for an RPS Awards in both 2016 and 2017, and later this year will release its first CD.
The aims of the Chineke! Foundation and Orchestra are certainly ambitious, and in words of Sir Simon Rattle: ‘Chineke! is not only an exciting idea but a profoundly necessary one. The kind of idea which is so obvious that you wonder why it is not already in place. The kind of idea which could deepen and enrich classical music in the UK for generations. What a thrilling prospect!’
Leslie Suganandarajah
Music Director of the Salzburg Landestheater, Leslie Suganandarajah took up the helm in 2019-20 with a new production of Lohengrin at the Festspielhaus. In the current season his productions include Der Rosenkavalier, Jolanta and The Nutcracker.
Suganandarajah studied conducting at the Musikhochschule Franz Liszt in Weimar and was accepted onto the Deutsche Dirigentenforum in 2011. After being awarded the Hermann-Hildebrandt Scholarship for young conductors he was appointed Assistant Conductor to Michael Sanderling and the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra for the 2014/15 season.
Current guest conducting highlights include the Berlin Konzerthausorchester, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, MDR Sinfonieorchester, London Mozart Players and Opera North. He made his UK debut conducting Chineke! at the South Bank Centre earlier this season and was immediately invited to join them on their European tour in autumn 2023. Other guest conducting engagements have included the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal, Brucknerorchester Linz, Jenaer Philharmonie, Sinfonieorchester Vorarlberg and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie. He has a flair for classical and romantic repertoire especially Schubert, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms and Strauss.
Following five years at the Theater Koblenz (1st Kapellmeister in 2015/16), he moved to Linz to take up the position of Kapellmeister at the Landestheater Linz (2017-2020). In 2018 he made his debut at the Landestheater Salzburg conducting Prokofiev Cinderella after which he was appointed Music Director from the 2019/20 season.
Suganandarajah is an experienced opera conductor and his productions include Carmen, Figaro, Elektra, The Rake’s Progress, Rape of Lucretia, Rigoletto, Otello, Il Trovatore, Othmar Schoeck Penthesilea, Fidelio, Tosca, Lohengrin and Parsifal.
Born in Colombuthurai, Sri Lanka in 1983, his family fled the civil war and moved to Germany when he was two years old. Under the care of a German family supporting refugees, he began music lessons and developed a passion for piano, flute and organ. He studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover and at the Musikhochschule in Lübeck.
Roderick Cox
The 2018 Solti Fellow of The Solti Foundation U.S., Roderick Cox is an American conductor now based in Berlin, Germany. He was named the Minnesota Orchestra’s Associate Conductor in September 2016, completing the role in 2018, following a year as the ensemble’s Assistant Conductor. Previously, he served for two years as Assistant Conductor of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Alabama Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Roderick was recently selected as one of four participants for the highly selective 2018 Daniele Gatti Masterclass with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He was awarded the Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize from the Aspen Music Festival in 2013, which led to national recognition and a return to the festival as a fellow. He has also held fellowships with the Chicago Sinfonietta as part of the Project Inclusion Program and the Chautauqua Music Festival, where he was a David Effron Conducting Fellow.
During the 17/18 season, Roderick continued as Associate Conductor at the Minnesota Orchestra, where he conducted a second subscription concert week in October 2017. Further highlights of the season included concerts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (London), Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Seattle Symphony. Debut subscription concerts included the Omaha Symphony Orchestra in February 2018 and will include the Grant Park Festival Symphony Orchestra in Chicago, USA in July 2018, and Orchestra Metropolitan at the prestigious Launaudiere Festival.
Highlights of the 2016-17 season included a subscription concert debut with the Minnesota Orchestra, which was met with critical acclaim, and a viral performance video of Tchaikovsky’sSymphony No. 4 that reached over 8 million viewers worldwide- the largest number in the orchestras history. Other debut concerts included The Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra (D.C.), Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Johannesburg Philharmonic, and the Chineke! Orchestra (London). Roderick also conducted a performance sponsored by Google and the Colour of Music Festival for the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington D.C.
Highlights of the 18/19 season will include a subscription concert debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra with Cameron Carpenter in November 2018 and his Opera debut withHouston Grand Opera in January 2019 in performances of Bizet’s Pêcheurs de Perles.
Jeneba Kanneh-Mason
is already captivating audiences with her “maturity in performance and interpretation […], the former an uncanny phenomenon” (Fraser). The third of the Kanneh-Mason clan to establish herself as a soloist, Jeneba recently made her BBC Proms debut with the Chineke! Orchestra, performing the Florence Price Concerto and was heralded by the press as “demonstrating musical insight, technical acuity, and an engaging performing persona” (Music OMH).
Jeneba was a Keyboard Category Finalist in BBC Young Musician 2018, winner of the Murs du Son Prize at the Lagny-Sur-Marne International Piano Competition in France, 2014, and The Nottingham Young Musician 2013. She was also winner of the Iris Dyer Piano Prize at The Royal Academy of Music, Junior Academy, where she studied with Patsy Toh.
Recent and forthcoming highlights include debuts with the Philharmonia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and the Sinfonia Viva for the New Year Gala. She also undertook an extensive tour with Chineke! across Europe in November 2022 for the Price Concerto, and recorded with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. An avid recital performer, Jeneba will also be making solo debuts at the Zurich Tonhalle, London Wigmore Hall, Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, amongst others, as well as the Lenzburgiade, Rheingau, Cheltenham, Bradfield and Lamberhurst festivals. In 2022, Jeneba also embarked on tours of Australia, USA, Antigua and Barbuda with the Kanneh-Masons. Jeneba was named one of Classic FM’s ‘Rising Stars’ and appeared on Julian Lloyd Webber’s radio series in 2021. She has also been featured on several television and radio programmes, including Radio 3, In Tune, The BAFTAs, The Royal Variety Performance, the documentary for BBC4, Young, Gifted and Classical, and the Imagine documentary for BBC1, This House is Full of Music. In 2023 She co-presented a radio programme on Classic FM entitled The Kanneh-Mason Family Takeover.
She has recorded for the album, Carnival, with Decca Classics.
Jeneba holds the Victoria Robey Scholarship to The Royal College of Music, studying piano with Vanessa Latarche. She is grateful to Lady Robey, The Nottingham Soroptimist Trust and to The Nottingham Education Trust.
