The Hallé Presents Philip Glass: Angélique Kidjo Ifé Songs by Glass, From (2025/2025), Conductor Robert Ames, The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, United Kingdom

Over the course of three days, in collaboration with the RNCM, the Hallé brings you a festival celebrating his best-loved works. Angélique Kidjo – singer-songwriter, Grammy Award winner, activist – has a star-studded career spanning five decades. Tonight, she steps onto The Bridgewater Hall stage alongside Robert Ames, a skilled interpreter of Glass’s work and ‘a super connector in modern music’ (The Guardian), to perform the UK premiere of Ifé Songs – written especially for her. The composer said of the work: ‘Angélique, together we have built a bridge that no one has walked on before.’ Days and Nights in Rocinha is a thrilling tribute to the Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood. In true Glass style, it begins softly, slowly building and developing with increasingly complex percussive rhythms until it reaches a glorious climax. Glass’s Eleventh Symphony – sometimes reflective, sometimes fizzing with rhythmic textures, always fascinating – closes the programme.