Looking back on the BBC Proms

Last Wednesday Metropole Orkest performed for the sixth years during the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Together with Ledisi and Lisa Fischer the orchestra brought an ode to Nina Simone with ‘Mississippi Goddam: An Homage to Nina Simone’.

Luckily enough we can still enjoy the concert by listening to it on BBC Radio 3. Next to this, BBC Four will broadcast the concert on August 30 at around 11.25 pm (GMT)  and BBC Radio 2 on September 13.

Below you will find overview of what has been written in the media about the concert:

“This celebration of her art was masterminded by Jules Buckley, chief conductor of the Metropole Orchestra, who offered a judicious mix of the familiar with the little-known, the intimate with the sassy and strutting, the protesting with the heartbroken. He called on the services of 10 arrangers, including himself, to come up with orchestral versions of Simone’s enormously subtle, Bach-inflected arrangements. The temptation to go further and make something over-elaborate must have been strong, but they all resisted it. Buckley’s own arrangement of Be My Husband, Simone’s song about a difficult marriage (with words by Simone’s own abusive husband) had a telling simplicity, just drums and clapping hands.”
(The Telegraph, Prom 45 Mississippi Goddam, review: A beautiful reminder of Nina Simone’s art by Ivan Hewett)

“Call me dull for opening a review with a description of the queue, but at the Royal Albert Hall, the queue for Prom 45 – “Mississippi Goddam: A Portrait of Nina Simone” – is extraordinary. Lines of people snake from all the different entrances to the building, winding round it and out in different directions. There are plenty of the usual Promming types, but also young people and people of colour, all here to celebrate the life and work of a black woman who lived through the civil rights movement, dedicating her life to activism and pushing musical boundaries.”
(NewStatesman, Prom 45: Mississippi Goddam: A Portrait of Nina Simone is a thrilling celebration of a musical icon by Emily Bootle)