BBC Proms: Evelyn Glennie & Fantasia Orchestra
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💛 Date: 11th August 2026
💛 Location: Kensington Gore, South Kensington, London SW7 2AP
💛 Time: 10:15 pm
Fantasia Orchestra’s 11 August Late Night Prom at the Royal Albert Hall featured Dame Evelyn Glennie, the BBC Singers and conductor Tom Fetherstonhaugh, with a deliberately eclectic programme ranging from Coltrane and Duke Ellington to Feldman, Meredith Monk, Radiohead and the world premiere of Héloïse Werner’s Wood Pigeon.
There are concerts that demand to be heard, and there are concerts that make you reconsider what it means to listen. Fantasia Orchestra’s Late Night Prom at the Royal Albert Hall belonged firmly to the latter. For its return to the BBC Proms, Fantasia assembled a programme that resisted easy categorisation. Under the direction of Tom Fetherstonhaugh, music moved freely between jazz, contemporary composition, experimental vocal music and orchestral tradition, with Dame Evelyn Glennie at its centre. The result was less a conventional concert than an exploration of sound itself.
Glennie is, of course, one of the world's most celebrated percussionists, but her presence here was about considerably more than virtuosity. She possesses an extraordinary ability to make percussion feel physical: sound becomes texture, movement, vibration. In her hands, rhythm is not merely something to be counted but something to be experienced. That philosophy was particularly fitting for a programme built around the idea of listening. Fantasia's performance of John Coltrane and Duke Ellington brought an immediate sense of rhythmic freedom, while Morton Feldman's music shifted the atmosphere towards something almost weightless. The contrast was striking. Where Coltrane and Ellington filled the hall with energy and propulsion, Feldman seemed to ask the audience to inhabit silence and space.
It was in these moments that the Royal Albert Hall became something quite different. The enormous Victorian auditorium, so often associated with grand orchestral spectacle, suddenly felt intimate. Tiny changes in texture became significant. A pause could carry as much weight as a crescendo.
The BBC Singers were equally integral to this atmosphere. Their contribution gave the evening a remarkable fluidity, moving between the precision of ensemble singing and the more unconventional vocal language of contemporary music. Meredith Monk's work, in particular, seemed to dissolve the conventional boundaries between voice, instrument and gesture.
The evening's centrepiece was the world premiere of Héloïse Werner's Wood Pigeon, a new BBC commission. Werner's work fitted naturally into a programme concerned with expanding our understanding of what music can be. Rather than treating the voice as simply a vehicle for melody, the piece explored its physical and expressive possibilities, creating something at once strange, playful and intensely immediate.
And then came Radiohead's Pyramid Song in an orchestral arrangement — a reminder that the boundaries between so-called classical and popular music are increasingly irrelevant. Fantasia understands that contemporary audiences do not necessarily experience music according to genre. A listener can move from Coltrane to Feldman to Radiohead without needing to choose sides.nThat is perhaps what makes Fantasia Orchestra so compelling. Founded in 2016, the ensemble has developed an identity built around collaboration and adventurous programming rather than reverence for convention. Its return to the Proms, coinciding with its tenth anniversary, feels like a fitting celebration of that philosophy.
Fetherstonhaugh conducted with an evident sensitivity to the individuality of each work. Rather than forcing the disparate programme into a single aesthetic, he allowed its contradictions to remain. Jazz could be exuberant; Feldman could be austere; contemporary vocal music could be unsettling; Radiohead could suddenly sound entirely at home within the acoustic of the Royal Albert Hall.
Yet beneath this diversity was a coherent idea: listening as a collective act. That idea became particularly powerful late at night. The Proms can sometimes encourage spectacle — thousands of people gathered beneath the dome, the scale of the hall amplifying every gesture. Here, however, the emphasis was inward. The audience was invited not simply to hear music but to pay attention to it. Glennie's contribution embodied that principle. Her artistry has always challenged assumptions about percussion, but here it seemed to challenge something broader: our assumption that music must announce itself loudly in order to be powerful. Sometimes the most arresting sound is the one we have to lean towards.
Fantasia's Late Night Prom was an exhilarating reminder that classical music does not need to stand still to preserve its traditions. It can absorb jazz, experimentalism, contemporary composition and popular music while remaining deeply connected to the fundamental human impulse to communicate through sound.
In the cavernous Royal Albert Hall, Fantasia Orchestra made the vast feel intimate, the unfamiliar feel accessible and the act of listening feel newly exciting.
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