If musicians could cast spells, Maria Zardoya would be their high priestess. For her In the Forest tour, she paid homage to Swan Lake in a performance that felt less like a concert and more like a ritual.
Since forming The Marías in 2016, Zardoya has cultivated a unique emotional connection with her audience, existing in a dreamy space between nostalgia and fantasy. Over the past decade, the band has built a lasting connection with audiences, and with her solo project Not For Radio, launched last October with the album Melt, she moves further into a world that feels both cinematic and deeply personal.
On 23rd April, at London’s historic Hackney Empire, Zardoya marked Not For Radio’s first-ever tour across the EU and UK and what unfolded on stage was nothing short of theatrical alchemy. The venue itself added to the magic. With its ornate balconies and vintage grandeur, Hackney Empire already carries a sense of drama, but as the lights dimmed, the stage transformed into a mystical forest with moss-covered platforms rising unevenly like small islands, candle stands flickering in warm amber tones, and a backdrop of towering trees shrouded in mist. Blue lighting washed over the scene, creating an atmosphere that felt dramatic, cathartic, romantic, and quietly heartbreaking.
The show opened with a harpist performing Swan Lake, immediately grounding the audience in classical storytelling. As the curtains rose, Maria appeared centre stage in a swan-like pose, sitting on the elevated moss-covered platform with her bandmates on either side. Slowly, she began to rise, unfolding her arms in a movement that mirrored a swan opening its wings. Delicate, deliberate, and deeply theatrical.
She opened with “Puddles” from Melt, dressed in a breathtaking white gown with touches of gold and dramatic feathered wings, fully embracing the Swan Lake motif. The performance moved seamlessly into “Moment,” “Magnet,” and other songs from the album, each one blending into the next like chapters of a surreal dream. The audience responded with overwhelming energy, completely immersed in the world she had created. Later in the set, she introduced songs from her newest project Bloom, featuring “Kitten,” “Ache,” and the haunting “Living Room,” which felt more intimate and vulnerable.
The theatrics continued with one of the evening’s most spellbinding moments when long sheets of sheer white fabric descended from the ceiling, cascading around centre of the stage like drifting clouds, accompanied by poetic narration about nature, swans, and heartbreak. The performance shifted from concert to theatre. Later at the emotional climax, a male performer lifted Maria at the centre of the stage, and as the curtains fell around them, she appeared to die in his arms, translating a striking visual echo of Swan Lake’s tragic ending. He sank to his knees holding her still body. It felt like watching a story unfold rather than simply listening to music.
But the narrative did not end in tragedy. In a powerful moment of rebirth, Maria returned to the stage as the black swan, now dressed in a dramatic black gown and feathered jacket, darker, stronger, and more defiant. Marking this moment of rebirth, she performed her beloved song “Not the Only One,” as artificial snow fell gently across the stage, settling over the moss and candlelight. She then paused to deliver a few stripped-back lines from an acoustic version of “No One Noticed,” one of her most widely recognised songs, drawing an immediate reaction from the crowd. Not For Radio’s London show was not simply a concert; it was theatre, storytelling, and emotional spectacle, a world carefully built and then slowly released back into silence.
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Words: Nandini Bhattacharya