What a Season! Looking back on our 40th birthday year.

Last Saturday we welcomed the Southbank Sinfonia to a packed out Sheldonian Theatre for the final concert of our 40th Anniversary season. And what a season it’s been. We’ve looked at nature as a source of inspiration across all different styles of music from orchestral and chamber through to jazz, electronica and folk. We’ve visited all four corners of the UK and Ireland with visits from Scots Fergus McCreadie and Donald Grant who collaborated with Manchester Collective, while Catrin Finch and Aoife Ní Bhrian brought us beautiful music from their respective Welsh and Irish heritages.

Closer to home we’ve also celebrated our roots here in Oxford, bringing back artists we’ve worked with over the last 40 years including Europa Galante and Andreas Scholl as well as providing Music at Oxford debuts for a range of diverse artists that were new to us, such as 12 Ensemble, Mammal Hands (pictured above) and the Notos Quartett. The Marian Consort have continued their residency with us too, bringing us a sold out Jacobean Christmas in December and two brand new commissions by Laura Cannell and Leo Chadburn in March when they explored ‘the Language of Flowers’.

We’ve also continued our partnership with many amazing venues across our city who we love to work with, including the Sheldonian Theatre, Christ Church Cathedral and St. Barnabas in Jericho. We also launched our new programming thread of film screenings with the Ultimate Picture Palace – exploring the lives of Nina Simone and Max Richter in more detail, alongside deeper explorations into Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and the world of Scottish folk songs with Aidan Moffatt.

Our Learning and Participation work also continued apace, expanding across the county to work with schools, care homes, and The Porch Day Centre. This week we are coming to the end of our year-long series of projects called a Season for Change, which has produced six new songs created in collaboration with children from Wood Farm Primary School, John Henry Newman Academy and St. Michael’s C of E Primary School Jericho.

Of course, none of this happens without you, our audience, and we’ve been truly thrilled at your response to our 40th birthday celebrations, with you turning out in huge numbers even for artists new to us – with a good number of performances selling out completely. Seeing a large and enthusiastic audience is always rewarding, especially when we’ve nurtured a concert into life from being just a kernel of an idea initially.

Whether you’ve been to one concert or ten this season, thank you so much – you make it all worthwhile and possible. Thank you also to the very many people who have contributed to our 40 for 40 campaign, which aims to ensure we can continue to bring this incredible array of music to Oxford well into the future. Of course, it’s not too late to donate, and you can find out more here.

We’re now taking a short break over the summer but will back before you know it with a brand-new series of exciting concerts designed to uplift, thrill, challenge and change us.

40 years down, here’s to the next 40!