Championing Tomorrow’s Composers, Re-imagining Contemporary Classics: London Sinfonietta Invites Audiences on a Journey of Discovery Through New Music this year
The London Sinfonietta’s 2025 season is full of adventures as it re-presents contemporary classics in collaboration with other art forms, staging exciting new commissions from the next generation of composers.
Celebrating the inspirational yet still challenging musical voices of the 20th century, London Sinfonietta presents an expansive programme of 20th and 21st century treasures.
- London Sinfonietta’s 2025 season utilises exciting cross-form collaborations. The orchestra will elevate emerging talent through commissions and premieres, whilst always seeking to inspire young people and local communities through their participation in creating and performing new music.
- Having recently moved to a new home at Theatro Technis in Camden, ideas around how performance and space enhance the listening experience are more pertinent than ever, and are inherent in an ensemble that specialises in new music.
- The 2024-25 season started with three sold-out concerts–two at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the final at Kings Place–with Telegraph writing of Schoenberg: Reshaping Tradition: ‘London Sinfonietta’s wonderful tribute concert reminded us that though Schoenberg’s music can be madly excessive and thorny, it can also be overwhelmingly moving and even loveable.’ and Bachtrack writing of Love Lines: ‘I have reviewed other sessions of unwrapping; this was the first that was engaging from start to finish.’
- The Sinfonietta is attracting a whole new audience of classical music goers with 60% of last season’s Refracted Sound audience first-time classical concert attendees
- CEO and Artistic Director Andrew Burke says:
The music we have championed for over 50 years and the music we continue to commission fascinates and inspires existing and new audiences. This season we are aiming to tell the stories of this music as part of a series of extraordinary performances and concert stagings that will make a season of unmissable events. We continue to support the best, brilliant emerging talent in our side-by-side performances and inspire school children in many areas outside of London in the art of composition. With the support of individuals, trusts & foundations, we are finding an exciting new future for the art-form we passionately believe in, and which by its very nature connects with, and expresses something about, the lives and communities of people in this country and around the world.
- Recently, London Sinfonietta presented Debussy’s shimmering reflections, Xenakis’ untamed energy, and a world-class trio of clarinet, cello and piano in a powerful immersive experience After Dark: Music in Nature’s Glow (2 February 2025) at Turner Sims in Southampton.
- Between 1949 and 1954, composers Pierre Boulez and John Cage exchanged letters revealing unexpected common ground despite their post-war divergence in musical approaches. London Sinfonietta presents an intimate chamber concert ‘The Boulez/Cage Letters’ (9 March 2025) that reveals a story of intriguing correspondence between performances of their music, highlighting the often-overlooked similarities between Boulez’s mathematical precision and Cage’s avant-garde freedom, creating a curious conversation through their compositions and dialogue.
- One unwavering tradition of the London Sinfonietta is its annual projects centred around music education, with Composition Challenges set for the academic year of inspiring workshops in the classroom, and the Sound Out Schools concert returning for a whistle-stop tour of new music and works created by local students (28 March 2025). Further plans to include work in schools and communities in Enfield and Camden, surrounding the ensemble’s new office home, are also underway.
- Hidden Voices (3 April 2025) presents the world-premiere of a series of ‘anti-concertos’ by British modern classical composer Laurence Osborn, who is inspired by the voices in history who are ignored, unknown or suppressed. Hannah Kendall’s shouting forever into the receiver (UK premiere) explores a similar theme, while Berio’s classic Folk Songs features a music tradition so often attributed to ‘anon’. In Osborn’s ‘anti-concertos’, solo instruments are overwhelmed at points by the nature of their solo and other members of the ensemble.
- Finding new ways to present canonical contemporary works, London Sinfonietta partners with world-renowned German dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests for the UK premiere of their dance performance to Terry Riley’s groundbreaking open composition In C (29 and 30 April 2025) as part of Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival; musicians and dancers will improvise within a structured framework to create an ever-evolving spectacle of melody, polyphony, and movement.
- As part of London Sinfonietta’s fifth Writing the Future scheme, Humans (12 June 2025) presents two exclusive world premieres of future-facing composers Pablo Martinez and Sun Keting. Martinez’s work Just for today is based on his mother’s life and narrates a transformation of life in relation to society through the lens of a drug addict as they seek to fulfil their paramount need to be loved. Sun Keting blends traditional and electronic music with dance in ‘Conduit’. Designed to feel simultaneously organic and futuristic, the piece explores how technology shapes our understanding of relationships and emotions, acting as both a barrier and a means of engagement.
London Sinfonietta is entering a period of evolution over the coming two years, supported by Arts Council England’s ‘Transform’ programme and generous financial input from Cockayne for a series of commissions spanning across 2025 to 2027, Jerwood Arts for its support of the Writing the Future programme which evolves work with early career composers, the John Ellerman Foundation and the Garfield Weston Foundation for core support and the Karlsson Játiva Charitable Foundation for its support of successful schools-based Composition Challenges programme. More about each of these projects will be announced soon.