Join us for An Evening of Nostalgia with Deborah Aloba (Soprano) and John Bradley (Pianist) featuring Schumann. Barber. R Strauss. An intimate evening of classical singing in The Longshore Room, based in the basement of Pepys Community Hub.

Deborah Aloba is a soprano whose career has taken her from the stages of the Latvian National Opera, Lyon Opera House, and Sadler's Wells to leading roles in Aida, Carmen, and Samson and Delilah. After founding Vision Voices Community Opera in 1999 — which produced ten operas and brought workshops into schools and prisons — she spent nearly twenty-five years teaching vocal performance across London colleges. For this concert she joins pianist John Bradley, a Digital Humanities academic at King's College London and regular player with the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club.

Their programme opens with Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a lush, dreamlike setting of James Agee's prose poem that captures an idyllic evening in the American South through the eyes of a child who seems to shift into adulthood. Next, Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben traces a woman's life through love, marriage, motherhood, and loss — told from her perspective as she looks back on her relationship with her husband. The concert closes with Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, composed at age 84, which moves from rapturous spring through autumnal September to a final, crystalline meditation on death and devotion, ending with the famous image of an elderly couple watching the sunset together.

Tickets are £10, but please pay what you can. We are a community space and no one will be turned away due to cost. If you can and would like to donate more this is also welcomed. What you pay goes directly toward supporting the artists. BYOB. Tickets available on the door or via eventbrite, linked here.

For any questions regarding the event or accessibility please get in touch via e-mail at arts@pepyscommunityhub.org.