Current Funding Situation

by Will Harriss, Development Director

Along with some 880 other arts organisations across England, Britten Sinfonia is an RFO – one of Arts Council England’s Regularly Funded Organisations. The funding, which for Britten Sinfonia is worth some £341,000 for the current financial year, enables the orchestra to plan and present its award-winning concerts and productions. It enables us to present guest artists of world-class calibre to audiences who may otherwise not get the opportunity to hear them live. It also gives us the ability to plan further ahead, a crucial factor when commissioning and engaging artists and composers who are much in demand by orchestras across the world.

The support we receive from Arts Council England is longstanding and important. It means much more than just money too; the Eastern region ACE office (through whom we are funded) provide advice, ideas, and support when we need it, and their core funding is the basis on which much other funding (for instance from trusts, foundations, and individual donors) can be leveraged.

Things are changing however. The spectre of public funding cuts is looming, and on 20 October, when the government’s spending review is announced, we (and every other RFO) will discover just what the future is likely to hold. Current forecasts differ depending on what you read, but cuts of around 25% could be on the cards for Arts Council England-funded organisations.

On the one hand this all sounds quite bleak, with funding cuts having the potential to do real damage to the culture of innovation and quality that has been fostered over the last decade. For Britten Sinfonia, the impact of such a cut would be significant, although we believe there are also many positives to take from the situation.

As an organisation one of our key principles has always been that we should be ‘fleet of foot’ – able to respond quickly, proactively, and innovatively to changes as they occur. The same principles apply to how we treat the new and emerging funding landscape. The reduction in public funding challenges us to do something different and to think creatively about how we respond to what is undoubtedly going to be a tough few months and years.

Despite the funding challenges our artistic vision and standards of world-class excellence remain undiluted. As we approach our 20th birthday in 2012 we’re planning ever more thrilling concert programmes, matched by an increasingly adventurous Creative Learning programme. We’ll be performing more concerts, in more venues than ever before. From chamber recitals to performances at the Royal Opera House, there’s a lot going on.

A compelling artistic programme needs resource to make it happen. We’re actively planning how to increase our financial support from individual givers (watch out for the fundraising campaign in the autumn, or click here to join us right now as a Friend, from just £50), as well as from trusts and foundations, and from corporate donors. We consider ourselves to be an efficient, well-governed organisation with great ideas and an important case for support.

What can you do to help? Well, please do consider joining us as a Friend, from just £50 per year. Whatever £4.16 a month means to you, it certainly means a whole lot to us. Come and establish your own musical legacy by supporting our groundbreaking commissioning programme, or even support the chairs of one of our virtuosic Principal Players.

If there’s ever a time that we need our Friends it’s now. Pledge your support and in return we will give you unforgettable performances, excellent new commissions, and the chance to meet some of the artists who are shaping the musical landscape of today.

It’s a brave new funding world, but we’re looking forward to the future. Come and be part of it and make a difference.

A Continuing Relationship

by James MacMillan

This October Britten Sinfonia and Nicholas Daniel will premiere James MacMillan's new Oboe Concerto in a series of concerts (which he will also conduct) in Birmingham, London, Norwich and Cambridge. The orchestra will also be performing a number of his tribute pieces during the first concert in our At Lunch series. In this article James describes his ongoing relationship with Britten Sinfonia and how it has grown over the years.


As a composer and conductor it is wonderful to have an ongoing relationship with a particular orchestra like the one I have with Britten Sinfonia. It allows you to really get to the heart of an ensemble; to get to know the players well and what their strengths are, to understand their philosophy and vision, and to see an orchestra develop and grow.

Britten Sinfonia have performed my music since their inception but our relationship really took off when the orchestra performed (and I conducted) the world premiere of my opera, Parthenogenesis in 2000 in Cambridge and at the Edinburgh International Festival that same year. Last year we revived this at the Royal Opera House in a new version directed by Katie Mitchell which was particularly thrilling. There have been a number of other collaborations, notably a tour of the UK and Netherlands featuring the concert premiere of my Second Piano Concerto and I’m delighted to see is featured again in Britten Sinfonia’s 2010/11 season in May 2011.

This season I am closely involved in several exciting projects with Britten Sinfonia. Their award-winning Lunchtime series features a number of my ‘tribute’ pieces – these are a selection of short works that I have dedicated to people I have known or admired. I am incredibly touched that Peter Maxwell Davies is to write a new piece for this series of concerts. His influence has pervaded the UK and international music scene and I have admired his work for a number of years. I can’t wait to hear what he has written!

In October my new work, an Oboe Concerto for Britten Sinfonia and Nicholas Daniel will premiere at Birmingham Town Hall, who have also co-commissioned the work, before touring the UK. The concerto is written specifically for Nick, and is the result of a number of years knowing and working with him. The work will be a little over 20 minutes, and is in three movements. The really hard work on it has been in the last six months, and in the work are some allusions to another solo piece of mine – ‘In Augustiis’ – which is also in Nick’s repertoire. I will also be conducting this concert which includes music by two composers that are particularly close to my heart, Shostakovich and Beethoven.

I am sure these projects will only deepen already fruitful relationship with Britten Sinfonia and we are already planning some exciting collaborations for the future – watch this space!

James MacMillan

Summer Festivals

With the nights getting longer and the sun shining (between the usual British downpours) summer is here. And as always at this time of year there are a raft of festivals to enjoy. Whether you are a fan of classical, rock and pop, opera, dance or folk music the explosion in the number of festivals in the UK over the past few years means that all tastes are catered for.

Britten Sinfonia performs in a number of festivals each year. Perhaps a highlight of recent years was last summers performance at Latitude. Although not performing at Latitude this year Britten Sinfonia are still hitting the festival circuit with a performance later this week at the Aldeburgh Festival, next month during the City of London Festival and also performances during the worlds famous BBC Proms and Glyndebourne.

The staff here at Britten Sinfonia will also be enjoying a variety of music at various events they’re planning on attending;

Will (Development Director) has just returned from Norway where he saw some events at the Bergen Jazz Festival including Gwilym Simcock who performed with Britten Sinfonia in April.

Hannah (Marketing & Development Assistant) will be going on tour with Leicestershire Chorale to the smallest city in the UK, St David’s. It sounds idyllic and she’s hoping the sun will shine gloriously for a week in July over this little Welsh city. The Chorale will be performing services at St David’s cathedral throughout the week and the tour culminates with a concert at the Fishguard International Festival. The Festival has been going for over 40 years and hosts a variety of events from 22 July to 2 August. Hannah is looking forward to a week of music making and a nice long walk or two along the Pembrokeshire coastline.

Rebecca (Finance Director) is really looking forward to the Cambridge Folk Festival, the lovely mixture of world folk music, sunshine (hopefully) and a cold beer. This year she is particularly looking forward to the showcase of Scottish folk performers, plus a young British band called Coco Lovers who Rebecca recently saw busking in the centre of Cambridge.

Hannah (Concerts Director) is excited about seeing the John Wilson Orchestra during this years BBC Proms. She saw his prom last year and can’t wait to hear his celebration of the music of Rogers and Hammerstein.

I will be attending the Ely Folk Festival and look forward to seeing the Oysterband again as well as discovering some new groups. I’ll also be trying to get along to a few proms and possibly the Secret Garden Party (a dance festival – but shhh - it’s a secret where it is) which I went too last year and danced the weekend away!

As you can see all of us are looking forward to discovering something new and unusual and Festivals are a great way to find that next favourite band or artist.

Claire (Marketing Director)

Creative Learning & Wordle

We’ve discovered a great new app for generating some lovely visuals regarding feedback we receive from our Creative Learning projects. Called Wordle it is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. And give a great visual representation of what participants thought of our projects.

To complement Britten Sinfonia's award-winning At Lunch series, the Creative Learning department has put on a number of workshops and projects designed to introduce young audiences to the repertoire. In association with the Wigmore Hall's Chamber Zone programme, we have held pre-concert workshops exploring Copland's Sextet and Ravel's Piano Trio, and visited Marlborough Primary School in Harrow to explore a new piece of music by Christian Mason. After they came to the concert, we asked the children at Marlborough to tell us what they thought of it and whether the workshop beforehand had helped them to understand the music better: Here is what the wordle cloud looks like from their feedback;



Workshop leader Rachel Leach and musicians from Britten Sinfonia also spent time with pupils at Witchford Village College near Ely and Handsworth Grammar School in Birmingham exploring the Copland Sextet. Here’s what the pupils from Witchford said;



You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Give it a go - its great fun! www.wordle.net

Cancellations, Calamities and Forgotton Suitcases

It happens very rarely but sometimes a soloist or conductor has to pull out of a concert at the last minute. This is usually due to illness and this is exactly what happened to Britten Sinfonia last week.

We had a wonderful concert planned as part of the Brighton Festival with the exuberant and talented violinist Pekka Kuusisto. As usual with our concerts meticulous planning goes into each programme and for this performance Pekka and our artistic team had created an evening of music focussed upon the juxtaposition between Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. Pekka was at the centre of this programme, as he would be not only the soloist but would also lead and direct the orchestra in the rest of the concert which was to feature music by Sibelius, Rautauvaara and a selection of duos for two violins by Bartok. After working with Pekka on our Britten in America tour with Mark Padmore the musicians were all very much looking forward to working with him again.

Then, a few days before the performance, our concerts director received a phone-call to say Pekka had strained his hand and may have to pull out of the concert. He really didn’t want to cancel and said he would make a final decision by the end of the following day. At this point heads were scratched and brains whirled into action as to what our Plan B might be. With Pekka being at the heart of this programme it wasn’t the case of just finding another soloist who could step in for one concerto but thinking more creatively of how we could retain the essence and style of Pekka’s performance and programming. Our concerts director spoke with Pekka as to whether he had any ideas and she also spoke to the leader of the orchestra, the inspirational Jackie Shave. A Plan B was formed, but with fingers-crossed that it wouldn’t be needed.

Then, on Tuesday our fears were confirmed. Pekka had seen a specialist who had recommended complete rest for his hand which meant no violin playing. Our Plan B swung into action. Back in October 2009 we had performed Eight Seasons at Norwich Theatre Royal as an opening to our regular series of concerts in Norwich. On that occasion four violinists from the orchestra played a season each from the Piazzolla and Vivaldi works. The concert was a huge success with the audience and as some of the same violinists were in the orchestra for the Brighton concert we thought we’d do the same again. However as Pekka would have led the rest of the programme our regular leader Jackie had not been booked for this concert and we really wanted her to be in charge. A few phone-calls, emails and texts later Jacqui had managed to change her diary around so that she could direct Britten Sinfonia for this project. This was incredible at such short notice and she even agreed to perform the 1st violin part of the Bartok duos having never played them before.

We then had to ask whether the violinists of the orchestra would take on the solo roles in the Vivaldi and Piazzolla. Jackie agreed to do one movement and Miranda Dale, Principal 2nd violin agreed to perform three pieces, some of which they had performed in Norwich back in October. Magnus Johnston, one of our principal players agreed to take on another movement and finally Warren Zelinski stepped up and said he would do the final three movements.

For the Bartok duos, Miranda, Magnus, Warren and another of our players Nicola Goldschieder agreed to be paired with Jackie. Another change was also made to the programme and instead of Sibelius the orchestra would perform Erik Sven Turr’s Passion-Action-Illusion which they previously had performed at the City of London Festival.


And then the concert day was with us. The musicians and staff travelled down to Brighton separately and arrived at St George’s Church, Kemptown for an afternoon rehearsal before the concert that evening. Upon arrival Jackie realised that she had left her suitcase containing her concert dress, music and other important apparel on the pavement in London as she was loading up her car (luckily it wasn’t her violin though…!). Once again, the orchestra pulled together – one of our first violinists offered Jackie a concert dress and our concerts director ran into Brighton centre to pick up some accessories for her.

The audience had all been informed of the change in soloist before arriving for the concert but as they entered the church you could tell there was a sense of anticipation and frisson in the air. The orchestra took to the stage and Jackie introduced the programme, explaining the circumstances for the changes and even told the audience about her forgotten suitcase. The concert was superb, the soloists each performed wonderfully and Jackie was her usual inspirational self. The audience were transfixed whilst the musicians performed but after the end of each work they burst into rapturous applause.

One member of the audience later commented;
“The ensemble dealt superbly with the loss of the soloist; one or two looked a little nervous before stepping forward but all performed wonderfully, the integrity of the programme (as Jackie put it) was maintained, and the variety of approaches in the Vivaldi made me listen more attentively than I sometimes do… in particular, the blend of superb musicianship with a informality and obvious enjoyment from the musicians was a refreshing change.. It helped to bring alive a programme that was – mostly – for me and my companion uncharted territory.”

We would like to thank each of the musicians particularly Jackie, Miranda, Magnus, Warren and Nicola for stepping in at the last moment and performing so wonderfully. And also wish Pekka a speedy recovery.

A View from a SinfoniaStudent on Work Experience

I was lucky enough to spend the first week of April away from my dissertation on a week of work experience with the Britten Sinfonia team. We had both brilliant sunshine and heavy rain in the same week, and the tasks I’ve helped with this week have been equally wide-ranging! The team here are all exceptionally helpful and friendly and told me about their different roles in the organisation in detail, Will Harris (Development Director) explained where the money comes from and who supports Britten Sinfonia; and Hannah Donat (Concerts Director) showed me where the money goes in her meticulous concert and recording budgets.

The internet is an incredibly important tool for all arts organisations these days, especially for an organisation like the Britten Sinfonia, which has regular concert series in three different cities and frequently tours the UK and abroad. The website is full of information about the orchestra and its concerts, as well as some interesting things like videos and, of course, this blog (which I’ve read several times on Facebook). On Tuesday I created web-friendly versions of the brilliant new publicity photos mentioned in the last blog entry. I then used these when updating the concerts page for the 2010/11 season.

Wednesday involved a lot of photocopying, as I helped Pippa (Concerts Administrator) with the library. We checked that there were no missing parts in the sets of hired music from this season’s concerts, and also took a record of the bowings in the front desk of the strings in case the same music was hired again. I then updated the OPAS database with all of this past season’s music. In the afternoon I sat in on the weekly Marketing meeting where Claire (Marketing Director) explained about the designs for the new season’s publicity material.

Thursday was the big day of the Britten Sinfonia and Polyphony concert in Trinity College Chapel with Carolyn Sampson. It was certainly a challenge loading the van with all of the music stands, lighting, staging, programmes, CDs and, of course, tea and biscuits for the performers’ rehearsal break. Hannah Perks (Marketing and Development Assistant) and I had to pack, unpack and repack a couple of times to make everything fit! Trinity Chapel was built in the sixteenth century and, as a soprano in Trinity Chapel Choir, I know how beautiful the building and its acoustic are. However, I’d never appreciated the effort it takes to set up all of those chairs! Brute strength is a definite requirement of this job, although Hannah Tucker (Orchestra Management) tells me that most of the venues already have seating in place…

The concert itself was fantastic and the audience clearly enjoyed the new works by Latvian composer Erik Essenvalds, who also gave an entertaining pre-performance interview. Carolyn Sampson was amazingly clear and forceful in Esenvalds Passion and Resurrection, and the percussion in Arvo Pärt was so atmospheric that we didn’t know if the concert had started or if it was chapel bells, but I have to say that my favourite item was Miranda Dale, Tom Gould and the Britten Sinfonia’s beautiful performance of the Bach double violin concerto. I joined the team of volunteer stewards to sell programmes, help people to their seats, and sell Britten Sinfonia CDs in the interval, and then helped put all of those chairs away again once the audience had left.

Because the new season will soon be on sale in Norwich, on Friday I wrote a letter to our regular subscribers there to let them know about the coming season’s concerts and the 20% discount and other offers that subscribers get. I helped to mail a letter to the Cambridge subscribers, inviting them to an interval drinks reception at the forthcoming Imogen Cooper concert at West Road, Cambridge. Finally, I helped Sophie (Creative Learning Director) come up with some Halloween names for all the events at the Family Music Day. Make sure you you ‘Come and Cackle’ with your ‘Little Spooks’ in October.

For the meantime it’s back to exams for me – but I’m looking forward to the At Lunch concert on 27th April where the Ravel Piano Trio will be perfect revision for my paper on Ravel!

Joanna Harries

All of us at Britten Sinfonia are extremely grateful to Joanna for all her hardwork during her work experience. Joanna is part of Britten Sinfonia's Sinfonia Student scheme - find out more about the scheme here.

Photographs

We’ve just uploaded the orchestra’s new publicity photos on to flickr! Take a look and let us know what you think.

Photographing an orchestra in an interesting way is always a challenge – trying to capture a live and dynamic ensemble is quite difficult with a static photo. You come up with an idea and then realise another orchestra has already done it or it dawns on you that it just won’t work.

For this set of images we worked with photographer Sussie Ahlburg. She’s photographed a number of soloists and ensembles in an engaging style. Firstly, we had a meeting with her to discuss what we wanted the new set of photos to convey and how we would be using them. At our meeting we realised the location for the photos was going to be key and set Sussie the challenge of finding somewhere that would be suitable. Sussie came back to us with some ideas and we settled on the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. This is a fascinating industrial building tucked away in a corner of London. It is now used as an exhibition space and café/restaurant (they serve excellent coffee!) but still houses a lot of the machinery used when it was a power station.

Our next challenge was finding a date that the musicians could attend. We wanted a selection of players who represented the different sections of the orchestra. Britten Sinfonia is made up of a core group of freelance musicians and as with all freelancers it’s always difficult to get them in one place at the same time!

Eventually it all came together and late last year we congregated at Wapping Power Station. Once all the lights had been set, furniture moved and the make-up artists had done their work it was time to start the shoot. Sussie started with the smaller group photos and then on to the whole group. Sussie’s experience paid off as she worked fast to capture the smaller and whole group shots; standing around for even a short amount of time can lead to people looking bored in still shots. After these photos we then moved on to individual portraits of some members of the orchestra which will be great to use in programmes or online when they feature in a specific concert.


We’re all really pleased with the results of the photos and will be using them online, in print and for press purposes for the coming season. Hope you like them too!

Claire (Marketing Director)