Sirocco is a thrilling collaboration between Manchester Collective and Guest Director, Abel Selaocoe. A maverick on the cello and a long-time friend of the Collective, he’s a star performer as an instrumentalist, singer, and composer.

Expect the unexpected: original South African folk, old Western classics given new life and outrageous solos from across the ensemble. Classical strings dance to the beat of African drums and electric bass guitar.

Critically acclaimed composer, Rushil Ranjan partners with veena and vocal virtuoso, Abi Sampa and the pioneering Manchester Camerata to explore Carnatic music in a vibrant, contemporary reimagining.

Carnatic music is widely considered to be the most ancient and pure form of music from the Indian subcontinent. With roots that lie in deeply spiritual and vedic traditions it incorporates mathematical, rhythmic complexity and raga to beautifully illustrate tales from Hindu mythology.

Join Leeds’ City Organist, and HAR-favourite Darius Battiwalla, for a Halloween double-bill of silent film classics, underscored by his signature spooky organ stylings.

Masterpiece of German expressionist silent film, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) follows the mysterious Dr Caligari who enthrals and terrifies villagers with his fairground sideshow, a sleeping man in a box who wakes only to answer people’s questions. When murders and terror seep through the town, all is not as it seems…

Irish soprano Maìre Flavin, recently in the title role of Opera North’s Alcina, will be heard here in more intimate surroundings, alongside Opera North’s Head of Music David Cowan.

Together, they will treat us to some of their favourite songs, from composers such as Dowland, Purcell and Schubert. At the heart of the programme is Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, five songs based on poems by Friedrich Rückert, including the haunting ‘At midnight’ and the beautiful song of farewell, ‘I am lost to the world’, whose closing lines are ‘I live alone in my heaven, in my love, in my song’.

Leeds-born composer, arranger and improviser; consummate soloist and generous collaborator; custodian of tradition and restless innovator, multi-award winning sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun takes to the Howard Assembly Room stage once more, this time for classical story telling.

Join us for two magnificent chamber works by Mozart, which sit hand-in-hand with Opera North’s production of The Magic Flute, in which wind instruments lead the way.

‘Kegelstatt’, the name given to the Trio for clarinet, viola and piano, can be translated as ‘bowling alley’; could Mozart perhaps have penned it between games? Highlights of the Flute Quartet include a slow second movement in which a beautiful melody tinged with sadness is accompanied by pizzicato strings, before being interrupted by a finale full of sunny high spirits.

Six-piece Zimbabwean Tonga band Mokoomba’s music has rhythms that cascade with all the power of the waterfall from which their hometown of Victoria Falls takes its name.

That rhythm section, bass and two percussionists, are joined by a keyboardist balancing the fluid textures of thumb piano and more energetic electronic sounds, and a guitarist whose lithe and melodic playing frequently erupts into thrilling solos. They are led by charismatic frontman Mathias Muzuza, his always exuberant voice effortlessly moving between smooth and coarse tones.

16 strings, 8 dancing feet and 4 voices with 1 aim: to make classical music wickedly funny and fantastically exhilarating for everyone, young and old.

Graffiti Classics burst the elitist boundaries of the traditional string quartet with their hilarious all-singing, all-dancing musical comedy show.