Page 393 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

7 January 2021

Michael White’s classical & jazz news:

Wasfi Kani; Vienna State Opera; The

Met; Guildhall School of Music

By Michael White

Wasfi Kani, who has been awarded a CBE

AS the music world has been among the hardest hit of all professions during 2020, it was good to
see it properly acknowledged in the New Year Honours list – with a knighthood for opera director
Graham Vick, a damehood for conductor Jane Glover, and assorted gongs for pianist Barry
Douglas, cellist Natalie Clein and composer Julian Anderson. All thoroughly deserved.

But one I’m particularly pleased about is the CBE for Kentish Town’s own Wasfi Kani: a
formidable woman with the energy of a volcano in eruption, whose achievements can’t be
contained in a single word. All I can say is she makes things happen. With a vengeance.

Starting out as a conductor, she created her own Pimlico Opera company which went into
prisons and got hardened villains singing Mozart – against all odds and in a way that sometimes
turned their lives around.

From there she became chief executive of Garsington Opera. Then she set up Grange Park
Opera, building a new theatre in the process. Then she joined forces with the Carphone