BBC concert musicians to chill out in Brixton

The chilled-out grooves at the Brixton Academy will not be provided by club DJs or live bands tonight. Instead, it is the BBC Concert Orchestra which will be performing where no orchestra has performed before.

Club Classical will mix arrangements of music by artists such as Moby, Goldfrapp and Kinobe alongside melodies from Handel, Mussorgsky and Fauré, all performed by more than 80 musicians from the orchestra boosted by an extended percussion section.

The club gig was the idea of the composer Anne Dudley, of the Eighties sampling group Art of Noise, who was appointed to work with the orchestra during its 50th anniversary last year.

After a sell-out performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London in October, it was decided the obvious next step was to take the concept to the heart of the club scene.

A BBC spokesman said the reputation and acoustics of the Brixton Academy in south London made it the obvious choice.

"This is the ultimate in live chill-out – the atmosphere, the raw energy and the epic quality of a full symphony orchestra playing the drum and bass sounds usually reserved for the club scene has to be seen and experienced to be believed," he added.

The orchestra, introduced by Fiona Talkington of Radio 3's Late Junction, takes the stage at 10pm after a one-hour warm-up for clubbers in the more conventional club hands of Rob da Bank.