Breaking: BBC sends orchestra to Nottingham
NewsWe have been leaked a document sent by the BBC to the Musicians Union outlining plans for the BBC Singers and BBC Concert Orchestra, both of which had been threatened with defunding.
In the document, the BBC says: ‘We can confirm that the BBC Singers should continue to make bookings and plans for the future, including their centenary year in 2024. We are in confidential discussions with prospective partners….’
More interesting: ‘The BBC Concert Orchestra will be London-based and will continue to perform and rehearse in venues in London and across the UK and – as we will be announcing today – as part of a longterm partnership in Nottingham.’
At least not to Coventry, as before.
Nottingham?! why there?
This poor underated unappreciated talented and versatile group of first class musicians deserve to be treated with a lot more respect than they are being shown now.
So, they’ll be expected to commute up the M1 to work or relocate to the midlands already served by the CBSO..?
This is surely part of the masterplan to grind them down into taking early redundancies or leave the band and pursue London freelance work elsewhere- what little there is.
This has been a shameless plan since the BBC slyly used the covid excuse to cut the BBCCO world famous live Radio 2 weekly music show ‘Friday Night is Music Night’ from the airwaves after decades of popular music entertainment.
Nottingham Uni is hardly the renowned centre of excellence for studying the art of writing film scores either..
What an insult to this versatile and brilliant band!
Shame on the useless suits at Broadcasting House who don’t appreciate or understand the terrific musical output historically of this band.
How terrible to be cast into the outer darkness of some where that is not London. Your comment is as patronising as it is insulting. The whole tone of this geographical apartheid being waged by London based commenters and media, not least from the BBC itself is shameful. As strange as it may seem there is life beyond the M25 and even some of us have a vestige of cultural sensibility.
You clearly know nothing about classical music in Nottingham. It has an excellent classical music scene, a wonderful concert hall visited by many top orchestras from the UK and abroad, and keen audiences. You can stay in London thanks, Nottingham doesn’t need people like you.
People like me?
You mean a freelance professional musician who left Manchester slums to study, live and work in London – the musical capital of the world where I brought up my family and made huge sacrifices to scape a living with the likes of this wonderful Orchestra who are being forced to uproot their lives to take music anywhere they are told to as part of their salaries because the BBC don’t know how to programme them anymore?
I know Nottingham well, having played the concert hall, theatre and churches there several times over my 40 year career. I just don’t think today Nottingham audiences would support the concerts the BBCCO will play.
They don’t already support the like of their local orchestras, so what hope has a BBC orchestra got?
Please don’t patronise and make assumptions that everyone on this site are people that spout on without first hand experiences.
You clearly don’t know Nottingham well. Playing somewhere ‘several times’ isn’t knowing a place well.
Most of the Royal Concert Hall’s classical concerts are around 80% sold – a hall about the size of RFH London probably matching RFH’s average attendance. The amateur Nottingham Philharmonic does an annual sell-out children’s concert there. The city supports two amateur symphony orchestras and many others. There’s multiple notable classical music venues aside from RCH, eg the Albert Hall and the uni venues.
From someone who actually lives locally, you have no clue what you’re talking about and your view is clearly just coloured by your bitterness at supposedly having to ‘uproot your life’ for the likes of a residency lasting… two weeks, which is just bizarre.
How insulting to the vibrant City of Nottingham and its people. Typical of southern attitudes and part of the ‘English problem’. It’s a partnership anyway, not some sort of banishment.
To those of us established with families and lives in London as a firmly established professionally based orchestra there, why should we be expected to uproot our lives because our employer has told us so?
That or leave a job we love with a band we love?
It’s not about where we end up being based, but why should we have to move anywhere?
I’m afraid Bored Muso’s comment typifies the entitled, partisan and metropolitan attitudes that have got the BBC into this mess in the first place.
I said in earlier posts about the whole shameful behaviour of the BBC ‘top brass’ relating to this sort of topic, that they are nothing but philistine, who know and/or care about the wider arts, and the BBC’s commitment to music in particular. I stand by those remarks.
The BBC concert orchestra has always travelled the country with Friday night is Music Night. The furthest north I remember was Redcar, probably late 1970s.
Nadine Dorries pushed for this dispute to become a live issue between those who have no say in their own futures, as can be seen by comments on this blog.
Decisions have been made by people without enough knowledge of the wider issues.
The savings made are too small to be of much benefit and too disruptive to be useful to culture in general.
Like ‘bored muso’ i still work in music and have seen 1st hand the devastation at ENO when they were told they would leave the Colliseum with nowhere to go.
The early 80s saw the Tory plan
of cuts to culture succeed in taking out orchestras like the NRO never to be replaced.
The versatility of the BBC concert orchestra is unmatched anywhere , wherever it plays.
The ignorance and arrogance of the culture departments in government and the BBC has been staggering.
Destructive and chaotic.
Any debate on the havoc they wreak should place anger on their doorstep.
This just goes to show what all classical music entities will need in order to survive in these financially-strapped post-modern times: WEALTHY CORPORATE or INDIVIDUAL SPONSORS who will insist on “calling-all-the-shots”!