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Rob at the BBC Proms: Blog 4 (the Last Night of the Proms)

This year’s Proms culminated on Saturday night with the annual Royal Albert Hall spectacular. It was a privilege to be up in the gallery with fellow guests Kathryn Knight (founder of Sing up, publisher, singer and Music Tech CEO) and conductor and animateur Greg Beardsell. We had a spectacular view with the benefit of all the live action, plus a bunch of TV monitors giving us the live feed and various other shots, so we got the atmosphere and the close-ups.
The Last Night of the Proms is a carnival of shouts, whistles and party poppers (on top of all of the music). I was standing with some of the Prommers and there was a clear divide between those trying really hard to time their party popper moment with either a silence or a high point in the piece, and those just free-styling! And the costumes in the gallery were brilliant.
My personal favourite was a man dressed up as a generic king (not entirely sure who/what he was channelling – Brittania’s consort?) resplendent with red cloak and gold crown, whose outfit was perfectly complemented by his bright orange Sainsbury’s bag for life – clearly even the Prom King needs snacks.

I get my own water bottle! Going up in the world… #BBCProms pic.twitter.com/bbnNB8ismq

— rob adediran (@robadediran) September 14, 2019


LNOTP tickets are only available to Prommers who have attended five or more Proms in the season, so it really feels like a night for enthusiasts and it is a refreshingly classless affair. The criticisms of the Proms, and classical music in general, relating to diversity are, for the most part, fair. Daniel Kidane’s presence as a BAME composer and his provocatively titled piece ‘Woke’ were programmatic exceptions and there is a certain irony to a concert with starts ‘Woke’ and ends with a medley of populist anthems.
The production team bravely touched on this in the pre-recorded sections but it is hard to tackle institutions whilst also propping them up and I wonder whether the BBC can ever broaden the appeal of the Last Night traditions in future iterations.

One of the lovely bits about being on TV is being contacted by people from your past. It has been a delight to be in touch with the conductors and teachers I worked with as a teenager (shout out to Coventry Youth Orchestra and Blue Coat School Music Department). It transported me back to that space of unfettered optimism and delight in discovering new music every day. This is something I have witnessed amongst the audiences of each of the Proms I’ve been part of this year, something that those of us lucky enough to work in music need to be reminded of every now and again.
So that’s all from me in this blog series. I hope you have enjoyed the Proms this year as much as I have – aren’t we lucky to have it!