MOURN
Figure, Alkanna Graeca
Frederick Waxman, Alexandra Achillea
Stone Nest. 17 April 2026
Event promotional photo: “Nyx (the night),” 2019 by Ioanna Sakellaraki
Stone Nest is not a typical early classical music venue, and this wasn’t a typical early classical music concert. A former Welsh Presbyterian church, since 1982 it has been a nightclub, a pub, a squat, and, since 2012, a new (work in progress) home for performing arts in central London. The smoke-filled space prevented me from appreciating the architecture of the internal space, but gave a clue as to the nature of the performance to come. That was a joint production between Frederick Waxman’s “forward-thinking” historical performance ensemble, Figure, who are “committed to reaching new and existing audiences through immersive musical experiences”, and the three singers of Alkanna Graeca, specialists in polyphonic music from the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea, blending “raw folk traditions with soundscapes and improvised sounds”. Their programme brought together these seemingly disparate strands in an extraordinary musical-theatrical exploration of the experience of loss, imaginatively staged by Alkanna Graeca’s Alexandra Achillea and Konstantina-Maria Spyropoulou, with musical direction by Frederick Waxman.
Returning for their fifth visit to the St John’s, Smith Square Christmas Festival, the Solomon’s Knot Baroque Collective presented a concert based on Advent and Christmas music from Leipzig, with pieces by the three successive Thomaskantor’s. The seating in St John’s was reconfigured from the usual facing-the-stage layout to one where the orchestra and choir were to one side, projecting about two-thirds of the way into the floor space, with the audience arranged on three sides. This was undoubtedly excellent for about one-third of the audience who found themselves sitting directly in front of them, but most of the audience had only a side (or a rear-end view) of the performers. 
Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews + 