King's Cross Summer Sounds

The inaugural Cubitt Sessions brought King’s Cross to life in summer 2016 with a free outdoor programme that invited audiences to discover something unexpected. Combining live music and imaginative performance, the festival opened up new ways to experience opera, theatre and sound.

Tête à Tête contributed six days of new opera, bringing together artists from the UK, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States. Highlights included audience-inspired improvisation from Impropera, New York band Bombay Rickey’s opera cabaret, and Secrets, a collaboration between soprano Claron McFadden and a jazz trio, inspired by anonymous stories from the public.

Elsewhere, aerial performance met classical music in Divertimento for Rope & Strings, Oscar Wilde’s The Remarkable Rocket received a playful operatic adaptation, and Opéra Louise transformed Arsenal and Chelsea football chants into a chamber opera.

With its free entry, international programme and spirit of discovery, Cubitt Sessions established the foundations of the festival that would become King’s Cross Summer Sounds.