Zeb Soanes, Britten Sinfonia Voices, Britten Sinfonia & Jamie Phillips
Biography Zeb Soanes, Britten Sinfonia Voices, Britten Sinfonia & Jamie Phillips
Jamie Phillips
Phillips’s penetrating insight and innate musicality convey an infectious joy in his music-making. Praised for his “ability to pick up a familiar piece by the scruff of its neck and shake invigorating new life into it" (Bachtrack), Phillips is a natural story-teller whose clear and expressive hands deliver his ardent vision.
During his studies at the Royal Northern College of Music Jamie Phillips was a semi-finalist in the 2011 Besançon Competition and came second in the 2012 Nestlé Salzburg Young Conductors Award. In 2016 was awarded a Dudamel Fellowship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Jamie Phillips has developed a strong guest conducting profile across Europe, recently conducting the Philharmonia, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and the Philharmonie Zuidnederland, Het Gelders Orkest, Oslo Philharmonic, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Opera de Lyon, Camerata Salzburg, Odense Symphony and Orchestre National d’Ile de France. Phillips enjoys a close association with the Hallé Orchestra. Following his successful appointment as Assistant Conductor (aged 20) the orchestra created the title of Associate Conductor for him and he regularly returns to conduct subscription concerts.
Britten Sinfonia
In 1992, Britten Sinfonia was established as a bold reimagining of the conventional image of an orchestra. A flexible ensemble comprising the UK’s leading soloists and chamber musicians came together with a unique vision: to collapse the boundaries between old and new music; to collaborate with composers, conductors and guest artists across the arts, focussing on the musicians rather than following the vision of a principal conductor; and to create involving, intelligent music events that both audiences and performers experience with an unusual intensity.
The orchestra is named after Benjamin Britten, in part a homage to its chosen home of the East of England, where Britten’s roots were also strong. But Britten Sinfonia also embodies its namesake’s ethos. Its projects are illuminating and distinctive, characterised by their rich diversity of influences and artistic collaborators; and always underpinned by a commitment to uncompromising quality, whether the orchestra is performing in New York’s Lincoln Center or in Lincolnshire’s Crowland Abbey. Britten Sinfonia musicians are deeply rooted in the communities with which they work, with an underlying philosophy of finding ways to reach even the most excluded individuals and groups.
Today Britten Sinfonia is heralded as one of the world’s leading ensembles and its philosophy of adventure and reinvention has inspired a new movement of emerging chamber groups. It is an Associate Ensemble at London’s Barbican, Resident Orchestra at Saffron Hall in Essex and has residencies in Norwich and Cambridge. It performs an annual chamber music series at London’s Wigmore Hall and appears regularly at major UK festivals including the Aldeburgh, Brighton, Norfolk and Norwich Festivals and the BBC Proms. The orchestra has performed a live broadcast to more than a million people worldwide from the Sistine Chapel, regularly tours internationally including to the US, South America, Asia and extensively in Europe. It is a BBC Radio 3 Broadcast Partner and has award-winning recordings on the Hyperion and Harmonia Mundi labels.
Recent and current collaborators include Keaton Henson, dancer/choreographer Pam Tanowitz and theatre director Ivo van Hove, with commissions from Thomas Adès, Gerald Barry, Shiva Freshareki, Emily Howard, Brad Mehldau and Mark-Anthony Turnage. The orchestra was a commissioning partner in a ground-breaking partnership between minimalist composer Steve Reich and visual artist Gerhard Richter in a new work that was premiered in October 2019.
Outside the concert hall, Britten Sinfonia musicians work on creative and therapeutic projects with pre-school children, teenagers, young carers, people suffering from dementia, life-time prisoners and older people at risk of isolation. The orchestra’s OPUS competition offers unpublished composers the chance to receive a professional commission and unearths new, original and exciting UK compositional talent. Members of Britten Sinfonia Academy, the orchestra’s youth chamber ensemble for talented young performers, have performed in museums, improvised with laptop artists, led family workshops and appeared at Latitude Festival.
Zeb Soanes
is the presenter of Smooth Classics at Seven on Classic FM, the UK’s most popular classical music station. For over 20 years he was a newsreader and reassuring voice of the Shipping Forecast to millions of listeners on BBC Radio 4. He announced some of the biggest events in recent years from the final result of the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump to the unfolding of the Coronavirus pandemic. He was a regular fixture onThe News Quiz, reported for From Our Own Correspondent and presented Saturday Classics on BBC Radio 3. Sunday Times readers voted him their favourite male voice on UK radio. On leaving The BBC, the Director General Tim Davie wrote, ‘I, like millions of the audience will miss you! Your voice has been a lyrical, clear and reassuring presence — the very heart of Radio 4.’
