Love Ssega: A Year in Residence

Each year, the Philharmonia appoints an Artist in Residence to collaborate with our musicians, opening up new possibilities, offering creative challenges, and creating new works that celebrate orchestral music and the many varied artforms that make up our rich cultural life.

In our 2021/22 season, we appointed the multidisciplinary arts company House of Absolute as Artists in Residence, the first-ever collaboration of its kind in the UK. House of Absolute combined our symphonic performance, digital innovation and technical dexterity with artistic disciplines, including dance, music, theatre, writing, spoken word and digital art.

Moving forward to our 2022/23 season, the time came for the House of Aboslute to hand over the baton to our next resident, Love Ssega. 

Love Ssega is a musician, producer and environmental campaigner whose work has been performed at London’s National Gallery, Serpentine Pavillion and New York’s MoMA PS1. As a result of his creative work and advocacy, Love Ssega was invited to speak at United Nations COP26 in Glasgow.

Love Ssega’s artist challenge was framed around the use of art and culture to promote climate awareness while exploring many facets of the climate emergency, from the narrative around climate refugees and future seekers of asylum to the impact of air pollution on the Black community in South London. 

But his journey with the Philharmonia started back in November 2021 when we collaborated on the composition “Capes For Blue Skies”. Capes is the successor to Ssega’s multi-arts 2021 multi-artform commission Airs of the South Circular, which reached 100,000 of his local London Borough of Lewisham’s 300,000 residents and saw him featured in YouTube Originals series “Seat At The Table” alongside Sir David Attenborough and US President Barack Obama.

By October 2022, Ssega’s residency started to take shape with a series of creative workshops held at the Bishopsgate Institute to explore themes and artistic approaches with Philharmonia players to facilitate understanding on both sides and explore creative expression. Around this time, we were joined by the non-profit Reboot The Future to support the legacy of Ssega’s residency by amplifying the artistic product and education resources.

In February 2023 Ssega took part in our Insights Day, themed around Music, Protest and Change. Together with Philharmonia’s Featured Artist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, he explored how music has been used to ignite debate and action on crucial issues throughout history.

‘In the spring, Ssega joined our community project in Bedford, Hear and Now, which brings together Philharmonia musicians, people living with dementia and their carers, and young people to make music together.

As summer approached, the 2022/23 season finale was in sight, all roads led to the Royal Festival Hall’s Clore Ballroom for the conclusion of the Love Ssega’s residency, Pangea Act 1. 

Pangea used live music, storytelling and video to focus on the climate emergency and its relationship to former colonial powers and displacement in the Global South. Prefaced by a brand new short film in collaboration with actor Nathalie Kelley, Ssega was joined on stage by an ensemble of 12 Philharmonia musicians which concluded Ssega’s Artist in Residence. 

But it doesn’t stop there, Love Ssega and the Philharmonia have collaborated to produce a 7-minute film Capes for Blue Skies, directed by Ramone Anderson in the gardens of the Horniman Museum in South London. The film aims to increase awareness, drive inclusive action, and campaign on air pollution. 

Capes for Blue Skies will also be released in audio format on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music – watch this space. 

A huge thank you goes to Love Ssega and all partners involved. 

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