Chineke! Orhestra was founded in 2015, and remains to this day the UK’s leading orchestra comprising majority Black and ethnically diverse musicians. A highlight of the BBC Proms each year, Chineke! attracts a more diverse and excitable audience than usual, creating an electric atmosphere.

Conducted by Andrew Grams (in his Proms debut), Chineke! give a definitive performance of Tchaikovsky’s autobiographical and final, Symphony No. 6 in B minor (1893), known as the ‘Pathéthique‘. The orchestra perfectly handle the melodrama of the symphony’s romance and terror, with impassioned strings and bright, robust brass. A call-and-response section among soloists in the woodwind section effectively showcases every player as fully committed to this deeply emotional material, leading us to the shocking ‘Requiem’ finale.

Tchaikovsky also opens the concert, but not in the way one might expect. Chineke! are committed to including works by Black and ethnically diverse composers in every concert programme, and so they pick The Nutcracker Suite, but in the 1960 arrangement by two African-American titans of jazz, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Originally written for a small ensemble, a 1998 symphonic version by Jeff Tyzik brings it right back into the concert hall. It is astonishing to hear the sheer the orchestra’s sheer versatility: in particular, Benjamin Pinto on clarinet, who is able to improvise like Benny Goodman one moment, and play Tchaikovsky’s tragic woodwind lines the next. The whole orchestra “understands the assignment”, with swinging rhythms and jazzy bends that make it sound like they’re a full-time jazz orchestra.

The concert is completed with Callaloo — Caribbean Suite for piano and orchestra (2016), inspired by the Trinidadian roots of Canadian pianist and composer Stewart Goodyear. It’s a frenetic, hyperactive work, and a particularly virtuosic showpiece for Goodyear on the piano, who also obliges us with a similarly sweat-inducing encore.

Tickets for all 73 Proms are available from just £8 on the BBC Proms 2024 website.