City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

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 Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor 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, alongside 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.

In April 2023, Japanese conductor Kazuki Yamada took up the post of Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor, and under his dynamic leadership, the CBSO continued to do what it does best – playing great music for the people of Birmingham, the Midlands, and beyond.

The RDMR contact for this client is Maddie