City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Music Director – Kazuki Yamada
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Music Director – Kazuki Yamada
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is an internationally celebrated symphony orchestra, at home in Birmingham. A family of 90 incredible musicians, led by Music Director Kazuki Yamada, proud to make exciting musical experiences that matter to the people of Birmingham, the West Midlands and beyond.
Resident at Symphony Hall, the orchestra’s musicians perform over 150 concerts each year in Birmingham, the UK and around the world, with music that ranges from classics to contemporary, soundtracks to symphonies, and everything in between. With a far-reaching community and education programme, a ground-breaking partnership with Shireland Collegiate Academy Trust, and a family of choruses and youth ensembles, it is involved in every aspect of music-making in the Midlands – and has been for more than 100 years.
This longstanding tradition started with the orchestra’s very first symphonic concert in 1920 – conducted by Sir Edward Elgar. Ever since then, through war, recessions, social change and civic renewal, the CBSO has been proudly ‘Birmingham’s orchestra’. Under principal conductors including Adrian Boult, George Weldon, Andrzej Panufnik and Louis Frémaux, the CBSO won an artistic reputation that spread far beyond the Midlands. But it was when it discovered the young British conductor Simon Rattle in 1980 that the CBSO became internationally famous – and showed how the arts can help give a new sense of direction to a whole city.
Rattle’s successors, Sakari Oramo, Andris Nelsons and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, helped cement that global reputation and continued to build on the CBSO’s tradition of flying the flag for Birmingham.
Under the dynamic leadership of Music Director Kazuki Yamada and Chief Executive Emma Stenning, the orchestra continues to celebrate the joy of music and of Birmingham through creating unmissable and unforgettable musical experiences for all.
The CBSO is supported by its principal funders Arts Council England and SCC.
Here at the CBSO, we’re thrilled to be able to support the Evgeny Svetlanov International Conducting Competition as it makes its UK debut. Our Music Director, Kazuki Yamada, was instrumental in instigating the competition’s first visit to Birmingham and shares our excitement in welcoming such a prestigious event to our home, the world-class Symphony Hall. It will be a privilege to help spotlight the next generation of conductors and we really look forward to welcoming them all to our amazing city.
– Emma Stenning, CEO of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra