CBSO LAUNCHES 20 FREE PUBLIC CONCERTS ACROSS BIRMINGHAM FOR BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND – WITH £1 GOLDEN TICKETS AVAILABLE OVER THE WEEKEND FOR THE NEW CBSO CONCERT SEASON –

“Our job is to bring the joy and the magic. Yes, of course we do that in Symphony Hall with Mahler and Beethoven, but we also do it by turning up unexpectedly in a cafe with a harp and a flute, and offering something completely unexpected and magical that you’ll remember for a long, long time. For me, art is all about encounters; it’s about unexpectedly discovering something that brings a bit of beauty, reflection and energy to your day. We should all spend more time doing that.

Jess Gillam: CBSO Collaborative Artist

“Jess Gillam is such a phenomenal artist, and it’s just incredible to watch her play. She is such an amazing ambassador for her instrument – and for orchestral music in general – so we’re very proud to have her as part of the CBSO family. This year, we wanted to centre Jess in the CBSO in the City programme, and she was really excited about the idea of bringing together what she calls her ‘rusty saxophone band’. People can just sign up and join in. Depending on what level of playing you’re at, you can get the music, attend a practice session and then rock up at Brindleyplace to come and be part of the performance. That, I think, is going to be epically fun. Whether you’re coming along with a saxophone to join in, or whether you’re getting an ice cream and sitting on a deck chair, I think it’ll just be a really good fun performance. And what a treat to have a musician of such extraordinary international calibre come and rock out with people in the city.

A tribute to Ozzy Osbourne

“Of course, news of Ozzy’s death last year sent a shock wave across the whole city because he’s such a figurehead for Birmingham. When we heard about that, it was the evening before CBSO in the City started, and suddenly my phone was blowing up with messages from everyone asking me, ‘What can we do?’. Our first priority as an orchestra is to make music that matters, and the second one is to be Birmingham’s orchestra. Those two things really come together in CBSO in the City. So we asked ourselves: ‘what is the music that most matters to Birmingham right now, right in this moment?’ And of course, it’s the music of Ozzy Osbourne – it’s Black Sabbath. Dozens of my team were messaging me to say ‘We’ve got to play some Ozzy Osbourne tomorrow’. Our good friends at Birmingham Royal Ballet had scores that had been prepared for their phenomenal ballet, Black Sabbath, and they were very kind in sharing them and making this performance happen, and Tom Ellis was able to come and guest with us on electric guitar. Ozzy the bull was right there, and I hope we did him proud. My sense was that it mattered a great deal to people in the city – and those beyond the city who saw the performance on social media. When someone of public stature dies, there are places where people leave flowers and all that sort of stuff, and that indeed happened across Birmingham, but in a way, it wouldn’t have been enough if there wasn’t music as well.

 

“I had messages from colleagues across the sector afterwards who I had been talking to for the two years since I’d joined and I had been trying to understand what it means to be a civically-minded orchestra, and they wrote to me, saying, ‘Well, there you go. That’s it.’

The £1 ticket initiative

“We’re really aware that, for quite a while now, classical music in particular – and orchestral music in general – has a bit of a threshold problem. One of the hardest things that we tackle is trying to convince more people that Symphony Hall is somewhere they can consider a home, where they can feel welcome, somewhere they needn’t be anxious or nervous about coming to. Of course, there are many people who enjoy developing a knowledge base about classical music, listening to the radio and going to talks, and there’s a whole world of adventure and understanding around the genre, but you don’t need any of that to listen to a tune, be moved by it and love it. One thing we’re consistently trying to do is to get rid of as many barriers as possible. Image can be a barrier. Price can be a barrier. Location can be a barrier. That’s one of the reasons why CBSO in the City is in public spaces and its free. Of course, one of the things that we hope CBSO in the City will do is make someone go, ‘I’ve just spent 20 minutes listening to an orchestra play, and it was amazing. Maybe I should think about going to a concert?’ In that moment, we want to make it as easy as possible for that person to say yes.

“Our £1 initiative lets us say, ‘You’ve had this for free. Why don’t we give you the next thing for a quid?’ We try to take away the worry of going. It’s not to say that our tickets aren’t otherwise accessible, but there’s something in just saying, ‘It’s a quid – what have you got to lose? It’s the price of a pack of polos.’

“We give out a ‘golden ticket’ flyer with a QR code; it’s very easy. What we’ve found is there were about 2,000 people that bought £1 tickets last year, and 75% of them were coming for the first time. We’ve done this for two years now. The first year we did it, we were overwhelmed by the number of people who turned up in person to buy their £1 ticket. It looked like the audition phase of the X Factor, with queues and queues of people – some people waited four hours to buy their ticket. Last year we changed the system to make it easier for people to just buy their £1 ticket online – and that’s what we’ll do again.

“We work hard to show that the CBSO is for the people of Birmingham beyond the concert hall. We recently had a Pride Ball in collaboration with the Full Fatt Sound choir and I was there with our players, covered in glitter, dancing along to ‘I Will Survive’, and so proud that we had players from the CBSO there. Our brilliant cellist Helen did a most beautiful Cher tribute.

“There’s that old, oft-quoted saying that ‘an orchestra is an ensemble of possibilities’, and it’s true. Yes, we have a core classical repertoire that is so exciting to listen to and fall in love with – especially when you have one of the greatest orchestras in the world play it – I would recommend everyone give that a try.  And let’s also remember that a great orchestra is so much more than that, and that the opportunity to join in is for everyone.”