The Chineke! Orchestra operates under the guiding phrase “Championing change and celebrating diversity in classical music,” while its parent Chineke! Foundation pursues the explicit aim of opening professional pathways for emerging Black and Minority Ethnic classical performers across Britain and the Continent. At the group’s first outing, its roster of 62 players embodied 31 distinct nationalities.
Both the orchestra and the foundation appeared in 2015, conceived by double bassist Chi-Chi Nwanoku. The title derives from an Igbo expression meaning “God creates.” Nwanoku had helped establish the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, instructed students at the Royal College of Music, and gained recognition as a BBC Radio 4 presenter, notably curating a program on the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Exposure to the work of the Sphinx Foundation in the United States, which supports young musicians of color, proved influential. A decisive experience occurred when she heard the Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra at London’s Southbank Centre; as she later remarked to the London Independent, “One thing I noticed at that concert was the incredulity on the faces of the philanthropists and politicians in the audience, looking at a stage filled primarily with Black people.”
Beyond the flagship ensemble, the foundation maintains the Chineke! Ensemble, drawn from the orchestra’s section leaders, and the Chineke! Junior Orchestra, devoted to nurturing gifted youngsters. Institutional endorsement arrived promptly from the BBC, the Association of British Orchestras, the Royal Philharmonic Society, and Arts Council England. The debut concert took place in September 2015 at Queen Elizabeth Hall; the following spring the orchestra was named an Associate Orchestra of the Southbank Centre and appeared at the Royal Festival Hall.
During 2017 the ensemble fulfilled several festival engagements, made its initial overseas appearance in Ghent, Belgium, and performed its first BBC Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall. That same year Signum Classics signed the orchestra, which issued its inaugural recording containing Sibelius’s Finlandia, Op. 26—once the national anthem of Biafra—and music by Dvořák. Programs have regularly spotlighted composers of African descent, encompassing world premieres by Hannah Kendall and Roderick Williams. In 2020 the orchestra released The Spark Catchers on the NMC label.
