About the Orchestra

Profile

Founded in 1993, the Sinfonia of Birmingham has established a reputation as one of the region's leading chamber orchestras and it performs a wide variety of classical music in Birmingham and the West Midlands area. Although the orchestra employs a professional conductor and leader, many playing members have careers outside the sphere of music. Some members are also music graduates from the Birmingham Conservatoire, intending to pursue a career in music.

The Sinfonia of Birmingham has close ties with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Many of the principal players from the CBSO have performed concertos with the Sinfonia and the principal conductor is Michael Seal who is also the assistant conductor of the CBSO. Concerto opportunities have also been provided for many young musicians, including members of the orchestra, to assist them in furthering their musical careers.

In addition to its regular concerts at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham, the Sinfonia of Birmingham has been on four highly successful international tours to Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. The orchestra's next tour will be to Germany at the end of May 2010.

Reviews

Fizzed with Brilliance
West Midlands Network - January 2008

The story of how SINFONIA OF BIRMINGHAM came to be playing the "unknown" Mexican composer Revueltas' Homage to F.G. Lorca is an interesting one. Conductor Michael Seal - his "proper job" is in the CBSO second violins - was coming home from rehearsal one day when a riveting piece came on Radio Three. He had to sit in his drive to hear the end and determined there and then to programme it. The result must have been the most exciting listening for the audience for years, for this was a piece that fizzed with brilliance throughout. Jazzy rhythms alternated with slow meditative sections and the whole was imbued with a life of its own. All sections of the orchestra "starred" but piano, percussion and tuba particularly so. Sinfonia's playing of it was quite brilliant, as indeed was Michael Seal's leadership. We had been in North America for the first two pieces with Copland's Quiet City and the original version of Appalachian Spring, and concluded with arguable the greatest of all Cello Concertos, Dvorak's. Hearing the work in such a fresh performance one was struck at how there is not a dull or uninspired page in it! The orchestra's principal cello, Eric Martens, was soloist, and he captured the warmth of the concerto's lyricism with some fine playing.

Birmingham Sinfonia's Secret
Jim Page, May 2004, Making Music

One day the secret of the SINFONIA OF BIRMINGHAM will get out and the punters will be besieging the CBSO Centre to hear performances of the classical repertoire which are incredible value and make supposedly hackneyed music live again. I probably hadn't heard Beethoven's Fifth in the concert hall for decades but I was bowled over by the interpretation the orchestra gave under Mike Seal in March. Balance was ideal and, with a first movement that was not over-driven and a finale that progressed with suspense-filled inevitability from darkness to light, this was a performance to treasure. The string tone of the orchestra was particularly impressive, a feature that gave added conviction to the accompaniment in Mozart's Fourth Horn Concerto, in which Elspeth Dutch was soloist; she is all of 23 and the CBSO's principal horn. Her graceful line and warm tone were a joy to hear and we all sat back and purred as Mozart's endearing work unfolded.

Birmingham Post
25th November 2003, Christopher Morley

If Beethoven's Triple Concerto were to be given a nickname, it would surely have to be The Interminable. Obviously struggling to accommodate the novelty of three soloists, Beethoven gets bogged down in problems of distribution and structure, and his attempts to solve them seem to take forever. Yet no advocates could have tried harder to make the piece work than the excellent Sinfonia of Birmingham and their musicianly conductor Michael Seal, accompanying (and that is the right word, for in this miscalculation of a piece the orchestra has little else to do) a gifted trio of soloists.

Really this should have been a cello concerto, Beethoven unashamedly showing most interest in this instrument here, and Eduardo Vassallo brought a beautiful singing quality to the upper reaches of its writing. Violinist Byron Parish, his tone sweet and compact, came into his own in the interplay of the dance-led finale, and Jonathan French flattered Beethoven's vamping piano part with more personality than it deserves. Together they worked hard at the tricky problems of balance and Seal and his orchestra found some unexpected spaciousness and grandeur.

But Beethoven also provided a genuine celebration of SoB's 10^th anniversary, his exhilarating Second Symphony given a reading which sparkled with just the right tempi, Seal allowing his players to shape elegantly flowing lines. There were fine horn contributions in the hymn-like slow movement, and some delicate flute interpolations. In Grieg's wonderful Holberg Suite, SoB's remarkable strings were bright and clear, big and lithe, but never burly.

Making Music
January 2002, Jim Page

There are many familiar faces in the SINFONIA OF BIRMINGHAM and the players obviously so enjoy making music with each other that this chamber (40 piece) orchestra's concerts almost always turn out to be most enjoyable, and the latest in the CBSO Centre was no exception. After starting with a Don Giovanni overture that immediately impressed with its crisp chording and underlying nervous tension, we moved on to JC Bach's Sinfonia and a sprightly Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. JS Bach's Violin and Oboe Concerto saw conductor Byron Parish joined by Anne Hagyard as a well-matched soloist. Few in the audience must have worried that these were not period instruments for the style was so right and the textures always transparent. The boldness and imagination with which Haydn's London Symphony bristles brought the satisfying concert to an end.

Making Music
May 2000, Jim Page

A conservative but satisfying programme from the SINFONIA of BIRMINGHAM was rewarded with a very good audience at the CBSO Centre in March. Peter Thomas and Catherine Bower playing Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat must have been one of the reasons for the excellent attendance and a suitably musical performance rewarded those who came. But there was quality throughout the programme under the baton of Andrew Constantine. Rossini's Italian Girl in Algiers really sparkled and after the interval Beethoven's Seventh Symphony showed us what a vital work it is, if played in the right style. So often it seems that the last movement, rather than being 'the apotheosis of the dance', can become a grindingly monotonous race to the finishing post, but here taut rhythms led by a wonderfully incisive timpanist, unleashed a torrent of energy that was truly in the spirit of Beethoven.