Carnegie Hall

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla was named music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) in February 2016, following in the footsteps of Sir Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo, and Andris Nelsons. For the 2022–2023 season, she assumes the position of principal guest conductor. Winner of the 2012 Salzburg Festival’s Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award, she made her debut with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra at the festival.

Recent highlights of her career include performances of Britten’s War Requiem at the Salzburg Festival, a new production of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, numerous European tours with the CBSO, and appearances with the London Symphony Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, and Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Ms. Gražinytė-Tyla has electrified audiences as a guest conductor around the world. In Europe, she has collaborated with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre National de Lyon, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra. With Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica, she has enjoyed a dynamic collaboration on numerous European tours. She has led operas in Munich, Heidelberg, Salzburg, at the Komische Oper Berlin, and in Bern, where she served as Kapellmeister. In North America, she has worked with orchestras in Philadelphia, Seattle, and San Diego and led The Met Orchestra in her Carnegie Hall debut in May 2018. With the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ms. Gražinytė-Tyla was a Dudamel Fellow in the 2012–2013 season, assistant conductor (2014–2016), and associate conductor (2016–2017). From 2015–2017, she was the music director of the Salzburg State Theater.

An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2018, she released her first album—a collaboration of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, and Gidon Kremer—in spring 2019. Widely acclaimed, it was hailed as an essential contribution to the rediscovery of Mieczysław Weinberg’s oeuvre, winning the 2020 Opus Klassik and Gramophone awards. A second recording was released by the label in November 2019 featuring works by Raminta Šerkšnytė, followed in July 2021 by The British Project with works by Elgar, Britten, Walton, and Vaughan Williams.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason is already in great demand with major orchestras and at concert halls worldwide. He became a household name in 2018 after performing at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Windsor Castle, his performance having been watched by nearly 2 billion people globally. Mr. Kanneh-Mason initially gained renown as the winner of the 2016 BBC Young Musician competition, the first Black musician to take the title. A Decca Classics recording artist, his latest album, Song, showcases his lyrical playing, while his 2020 album Elgar reached No. 8 in the main UK Official Album Chart, making him the first ever cellist to reach the UK Top 10.

This season, Mr. Kanneh-Mason appears as artist-in-residence with the Philharmonia Orchestra, performing three concertos in addition to chamber music and giving educational workshops. He also performs with orchestras such as the London Mozart Players, Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Camerata Salzburg, Hallé Orchestra, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra. In the Americas, he is featured as soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. He also performs his first solo cello recital program in venues such as London’s Wigmore Hall, Dublin’s National Concert Hall, Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana, and Paris’s Louvre Museum.

Since his debut in 2017, Mr. Kanneh-Mason has performed every summer at the BBC Proms, including in 2020 when he gave a breathtaking recital performance with his sister, Isata Kanneh-Mason, to an empty auditorium due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He appeared as guest soloist at the 2022 Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

A graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music, Mr. Kanneh-Mason was appointed as the Academy’s first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring in May 2022. He is an ambassador for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Future Talent, and Music Masters. He was appointed a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year’s Honors List. He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700, which is on indefinite loan to him.

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is the flagship of musical life in Birmingham and the West Midlands, and one of the world’s great orchestras. Based in Symphony Hall, in a normal year the CBSO typically presents more than 150 concerts in Birmingham, the UK, and around the world, playing music that ranges from classics to contemporary, film scores to symphonic disco. With a far-reaching community program and a family of choruses and ensembles, it is involved in every aspect of music making in the West Midlands. At its center is a team of 90 superb professional musicians and a more than 100-year tradition of making the world’s greatest music in the heart of Birmingham.

That local tradition started with the orchestra’s very first symphonic concert in 1920 conducted by Sir Edward Elgar. Ever since—through war, recessions, social change, and civic renewal—the CBSO has been proud to be Birmingham’s orchestra. Under principal conductors including Adrian Boult, George Weldon, Andrzej Panufnik, and Louis Frémaux, the CBSO won an artistic reputation that spread far beyond the West Midlands. It was when it discovered the young British conductor Simon Rattle in 1980 that the CBSO became internationally famous—and showed how the arts can help give a new sense of direction to a whole city.

Mr. Rattle’s successors Sakari Oramo and Andris Nelsons helped cement that global reputation and continued to build on the CBSO’s tradition of flying the flag for Birmingham. Under the dynamic leadership of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, the CBSO continued to do what it does best: play great music for the people of Birmingham, the West Midlands, and beyond. In September 2021, the CBSO announced that Japanese conductor Kazuki Yamada had been appointed its chief conductor and artistic advisor starting April 2023.