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.

Thomas Adès was born in London in 1971. He studied the piano with Paul Berkowitz at the Guildhall School, winning the Lutine Prize for piano, before continuing his studies at King’s and St John’s Colleges, Cambridge.
His early compositions include Living Toys (London Sinfonietta), Arcadiana (the Endellion Quartet) and his first opera Powder Her Face (1995), which has been performed many times around the world. Orchestral commissions include Asyla and America: A Prophecy, the tone poem Tevot and concertos for violin and piano. His Opera The Tempest received its premiere at the Royal Opera House in 2004 and in 2016 The Exterminating Angel premiered at the Salzburg Festival followed by performances at the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, all under the baton of the composer. In 1999 Adès started a 10-year relationship with Aldeburgh Festival as artistic director. In 2016 he became the Artistic Partner of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and has conducted the orchestra in Boston, at Carnegie Hall in New York and at Tanglewood. He coaches piano and chamber music annually at the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove.
As a conductor, Thomas appears regularly with the Los Angeles, San Francisco and London Philharmonic orchestras, the Boston, London and City of Birmingham Symphony orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw, Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In opera, in addition to The Exterminating Angel, he has conducted The Rake’s Progress at the Royal Opera House and the Zürich Opera, and The Tempest at the Metropolitan Opera and Vienna State Opera.
Adès has given solo piano recitals at Carnegie Hall, New York and the Wigmore Hall and the Barbican in London, and appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. He has performed Schubert’s Winterreise extensively throughout Europe with Ian Bostridge and in 2018 recorded it at the Wigmore Hall. In 2018, following a recital of Janácek's music at the Reduta Theatre in Brno, Janácek’s home town, he was awarded the Leoš Janácek prize. His many awards including the Grawemeyer Award for Asyla (1999); Royal Philharmonic Society large-scale composition awards for Asyla, The Tempest and Tevot. His CD recording of The Tempest (EMI) won the Contemporary category of the 2010 Gramophone Awards; his DVD of the production from the Metropolitan Opera was awarded the Diapason d’Or de l’année (2013), Best Opera recording (2014 Grammy Awards) and Music DVD Recording of the Year (2014 ECHO Klassik Awards); and The Exterminating Angel won the World Premiere of the Year at the International Opera Awards (2017). In 2015 he was awarded the prestigious Léonie Sonning Music Prize in Copenhagen and in January 2021 will judge the Toru Takemitsu composition award at Tokyo Opera City.