Profiles

If you think classical music is dead, go hear Britten Sinfonia and see a healthy body bursting with vitality. This band seems to have its finger on the pulse without resorting to any trendy gimmicks.
David Nice, writer/broadcaster

A classical chamber orchestra on the opening night of the London Jazz Festival with a Tunisian oud player? Purists on every side must have been steaming from all orifices. But this is the future of music. And it works, as this exhilarating fusion showed.
Richard Morrison, The Times

One of Europe’s most celebrated and innovative chamber orchestras, Britten Sinfonia is praised for the quality of its performances and an intelligent approach to concert programming that is centred around the development of its players. Unusually it does not have a principal conductor or director but chooses to collaborate with a range of the finest international guest artists from across the musical spectrum as suited to each particular project.

Recent seasons have included projects with Thomas Adès, James MacMillan, Joanna MacGregor, Masaaki Suzuki, Alina Ibragimova, Dhafer Youssef, Paul Lewis, Nitin Sawney and the Michael Clark Company. In 2009/10 guest artists and collaborators include Christopher Hogwood, Efterklang, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Nico Muhly, Katie Mitchell, Mark Padmore, Pekka Kuusisto, Imogen Cooper, Stephen Layton and Polyphony.

Britten Sinfonia has residencies in Cambridge, Norwich, Birmingham and Krakow with a major concert series at London’s Southbank Centre and the Wigmore Hall. The orchestra also performs in many of Europe’s finest concert halls and festivals, this season this has included performances at Latitude Festival, the City of London Festival and invitations to venues such as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional, Glyndebourne and London’s Barbican Centre. The group enjoys a blossoming international profile, a recent highlight being an acclaimed tour of South America. Later this year, Britten Sinfonia is touring to the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Mexico, with further tours planned in the United States, Canada and a return to South America during the 2010/11 season.

Britten Sinfonia is frequently heard on disc, on BBC Radio 3 and commercial radio. In Spring 2009 Songs of the Sky was released, the first CD on Britten Sinfonia’s Own Label, followed by the release of Hindemith’s organ music in June 2009.

The orchestra has received many awards including the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Chamber Music Award in May 2009 for its Britten Sinfonia at Lunch series, the RPS Ensemble Award in 2007 in recognition of its work and the 2008 Arts & Business International Award.