Laura Mvula plays the Proms: a concert truly like no other

Superb appearances from Stormzy and Wretch 32 were highlights of a well-constructed evening of grime from BBC Radio 1 Xtra, displaying the genre in all its troubled glory. 

Ruth Mackenzie, Holland Festival’s vivacious and invigorating new director, closed her first edition with a twelve hour Prom, reinventing it as a mini-festival at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.

Superb appearances from Stormzy and Wretch 32 were highlights of a well-constructed evening of grime from BBC Radio 1 Xtra, displaying the genre in all its troubled glory. 

Pete Tong's Ibiza Prom was at once accessible and authentic, uncompromising in its commitment to the art of dance, rightly unapologetic and unabashed by its unfamiliar surroundings. Long may we continue.  

It is fair to say that urban and classical music would not normally share an audience, let alone a stage, but, in the first-ever Urban Classic Prom, rising and established stars of the urban music scene met and collaborated with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under dynamic young conductor (and arranger of some of the evening’s numbers) Jules Buckley, in a showcase of two very different musical culture

Have you ever been in a chorus of 5,000 people singing the words of an Indian takeaway menu to the tune of Nessun Dorma? Well, courtesy of Kit and the Widow, Susan Bullock and the BBC Comedy Prom, I now have. Of course, the delight of the Proms audience is that not only did everyone know the tune, but a large majority were able to sing it quite competently: it really sounded more than decent.