Angelique Kidjo to celebrate 40-year career at Royal Albert Hall

Angélique Kidjo, winner of a Songlines Music World Pioneer Award in 2018, will perform at the Royal Albert Hall on November 17 to celebrate her 40 year-long (and counting!) music career. The Grammy-award winning artist, who earned a place in TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People 2021, will perform with the Chineke! Orchestra as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival. The concert is the first in a year-long world tour that will include performances in Australia, Europe, Asia and South America, and will end in New York's Carnegie Hall.

Angélique has just received the prestigious Polar Music Prize 2023 in recognition of her music career as well as her activism, as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and the founder of the Batonga Foundation, which supports young women’s development. Chris Blackwell, who discovered Angélique, was also awarded this prize. On receiving it in the same year as him, Angélique explained the role he played in her career, "I had sent my music to every record company in Paris. No one was interested, no one cared. Then the African activist Mamadou Konté sent it to someone in Jamaica who showed true passion for my work, signed me right away and started me down the path to success. This person was Chris Blackwell. He has allowed me to build these bridges between all the beautiful music and peoples of the world, so that we can celebrate our common humanity." 

Tickets for the Royal Albert Hall concert can be found here (available to Royal Albert Hall Friends & Patrons now / on general sale from 10am on Friday June 9)