B:Music announces its 2022/23 Birmingham Classical Series

B:Music is delighted to announce its 2022/23 Birmingham Classical Series at Town Hall and Symphony Hall - its first full classical season in over two years.

The new season will explore important themes and celebrate new commissions. There will be a host of world class soloists, orchestras and conductors taking to Birmingham’s finest stages and, as always, B:Music continues its mission to reach new audiences across the West Midlands and beyond with new music for the brave and the curious, Sunday morning concerts with coffee and cake, and late evening classical vibes.

Nick Reed, Chief Executive said, “After two challenging years, we’re delighted to present a full season of great orchestras, acclaimed soloists and exciting rising stars. As you’d expect, there are thrilling musical experiences on a grand scale – and they don’t get much bigger than Richard Strauss’s epic Alpine Symphony – but there are also more intimate and informal performances to enjoy. We hope this will be a comeback season to remember. Whether at Symphony Hall, Town Hall or in the new Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space, the B:Music team looks forward to welcoming our classical music audiences back.”

Pianist Martin James Bartlett joins John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London on their first visit to Symphony Hall for a performance which includes Walton, Ravel, Gershwin and Debussy [26 November]. The Sinfonia of London is a hand-picked ‘super-orchestra’ of leaders and section principals from the UK’s finest orchestras, which has just completed an unprecedented hat-trick of BBC Music Magazine Awards and triumphed in its BBC Proms debut last year. Symphony Hall is one of the select few venues where audiences can hear this phenomenal orchestra on its first UK tour which features Martin James Bartlett, one of the most exciting young performers to have emerged from these shores in many years.

A wide array of leading soloists will perform in the new season including acclaimed British pianist Paul Lewis who will be performing all of Franz Schubert’s piano sonatas in Town Hall over the next two years, taking in the joy and happiness to the tragedy and despair of Schubert’s short life [6 October and 7 March].

After an important year in her career during which she received an MBE, Jess Gillam returns to Symphony Hall [27 November], playing in the Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space with pianist James Baillieu in the first of four ECHO (European Concert Hall Organisation) Rising Stars concerts. A free spirit in style and character, Jess Gillam shot to fame as the first ever saxophonist to reach the BBC Young Musician final. Since then, she’s appeared at the Last Night of the Proms and presented her own award-winning BBC Radio 3 show This Classical Life. She is also currently Artist in Residence at London’s Wigmore Hall. The four Sunday morning recitals feature a group of outstanding artists handpicked by the directors of Europe’s most prestigious concert halls. Each musician embarks on an international concert tour of halls in the ECHO network, and B:Music venues Symphony Hall and Town Hall have been there since the series began in 1995. The other superb musicians who feature in the series are Vanessa Porter and Jessica Porter [19 February], James Newby and Joseph Middleton [23 April] and Diana Tishchenko and José Gallardo [14 May].

The Belgian National Orchestra make a welcome first visit to Symphony Hall with a programme including Mozart’s masterpiece Piano Concerto No 25 and Saint-Saëns’ thunderous and thrilling Symphony No 3 ‘Organ’ [8 November]. Norwegian-Mexican Artist and Producer Carmen Villain performs in the Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space with the Manchester Camerata Ensemble in a performance featuring works and arrangements by Bryce Dessner, Philip Glass and Mica Levi as well as Villain herself [6 November]. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra returns to Symphony Hall with Guest Conductor and world-renowned virtuoso violinist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider to perform one of the most popular violin concertos in the entire repertoire, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 and Stauss’s monumental Alpine Symphony [6 February].

World-renowned vocal ensemble The King’s Singers will perform at Town Hall in the New Year [27 January]. The King’s Singers have represented the gold standard in a cappella singing on the world’s greatest stages for over 50 years, and their performance at Town Hall includes music by Ola Gjeilo, Edvard Grieg, Hugo Alfvén, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi and Jean Sibelius. Ex Cathedra Choir and Baroque Orchestra return to Symphony Hall with Bach’s St Matthew Passion, one of the most powerful of all sacred choral works on Good Friday [7 April]. For many years now, Ex Cathedra’s visionary director Jeffrey Skidmore has led this superb chamber choir and Baroque Orchestra in Symphony Hall’s Good Friday Bach Passion.

Other highlights of the 2022/23 season include a performance by the Czech Brno Philharmonic Orchestra [16 October], a first Birmingham performance for charismatic Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii [7 November], and the Symphony Hall debut of the brilliantly unconventional ensemble The Hermes Experiment [3 December], which brings its seductive sounds to the Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space.

Tickets for concerts in the Birmingham Classical Series are priced from £13 and are available from www.bmusic.co.uk