A well-rounded approach to music in Sheffield

‘People who talk of the spread of music in England and the increasing love of it rarely seem to know where the growth of the art is really strong and properly fostered: someday the press will awake to the fact… that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North.’

These are the words of Edward Elgar, penned in a letter published in The Musical Times in 1903. At Music in the Round, based in Sheffield, we are inclined to agree. Music – indeed the cultural sector – is central to the lives of many in the city, shaping our identity and integral to the city’s sense of pride. It’s a fact recognised by Sheffield City Council as it prepares to launch a new Culture Strategy in the next few months. This will weave into the new City Goals, placing culture at the centre of the region’s growth over the coming years. Exciting times ahead...

(Image courtesy of Music in the Round)

From our home in Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre we present high-quality chamber music to audiences in Sheffield, across South Yorkshire and around the country, from Portsmouth to Goole, reaching over 25,000 people each year. We work with our resident musicians, Ensemble 360, whose 11 members include cellist Gemma Rosefield, flautist Juliette Bausor, clarinettist Robert Plane and pianist Tim Horton, and guest artists such as Stephen Hough, Angela Hewitt, Roderick Williams, the Marmen Quartet and Apartment House. Intrinsic to our programming are events for families and schools, with concerts and projects reaching around 10,000 young people ranging in age from three to 19.

Our annual festival, Sheffield Chamber Music Festival, dates back to 1984 when the Lindsay String Quartet, led by Peter Cropper, presented a two-week festival of Beethoven’s chamber music in the Crucible. It was such a success that they did it again the following year, and this month we are set to celebrate the festival’s 40th anniversary. Rather than programming dictated by an annual theme, we now invite a guest artist to curate the festival in collaboration with Ensemble 360. Previous guest curators have included Scottish composer Helen Grime in 2022 and pianist Kathryn Stott in 2023.

(Image courtesy of Music in the Round)

This year cellist Steven Isserlis has programmed a fantastic series of events over nine days, marking the centenary of Gabriel Fauré and featuring a line-up of guests including baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen. Each festival is unique, but this year promises to be a very special one, including a rare performance of Saint-Saëns’s first ever original movie score alongside a screening of the film, a choral rarity from the Irish-French composer Augusta Holmès, a Come & Sing afternoon for local music-makers with Roderick, and a Sunrise concert with wind music accompanying the breaking dawn. There is also an evening dedicated to our founders, the Lindsay String Quartet, following an afternoon concert featuring its former viola player, Robin Ireland, with Ensemble 360.

Continuing our 40th anniversary celebrations later this year, our autumn season demonstrates the range of smaller-scale music we present on a regular basis with visits from Jess Gillam, Stephen Hough, Maya Youssef, Claire Booth and Aaron Azunda Akugbo. We also wanted to share our 40th birthday with Sheffield music-makers, so we are producing a community opera this autumn, bringing together people of all ages and backgrounds to perform Jonathan Dove’s Monster in the Maze on the Crucible stage. The fact we can do this in collaboration with partners including Sheffield Music Hub, Sheffield Music Academy, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield and District African Caribbean Community Association (SADACCA) and singers from across the city is testament to the amount of music-making in the city. There are thousands of music-makers in our city who meet on a regular basis in orchestras, singing groups and ensembles, and many are part of Classical Sheffield, a member-led organisation that promotes musical activity in the area.  

(Image courtesy of Music in the Round)

During my tenure as chair of Classical Sheffield in 2019, a year after I started at Music in the Round, many groups requested a method of avoiding the clashing of events and concerts of the many groups. Now that people are more used to collaborating, this need is fading. Rather than sticking elbows out to keep hold of ‘our’ audience, groups now embrace and share the amount of music-making in the city. The result: we’ve made a ‘bigger pie’, rather than trying to divide it up. When there are several concerts on a Saturday night, all performances are being well-attended, rather than a small classical music audience being split between events.

This collaborative spirit is epitomised by Harmony Works, a new centre for music education being created in the heart of Sheffield, housing Music in the Round plus the Music Hub, Music Academy, Brass Bands England, Choir With No Name and other national music partners. The renovation of the centre’s historic building begins this year and by 2027 it will be open to music-makers across the region, providing a welcoming home for everyone, whatever their ability or background.

Sheffield is central to the folk music scene in England, and the melting pot from which emerged the Arctic Monkeys, Pulp and Def Leppard. The Hallé regularly visits City Hall, along with other orchestras, and the Utilita Arena hosts acts from Bryan Adams to Girls Aloud (as well as the Gladiators!). However, it is the music-makers within the city that make it special, which is why we are celebrating them this year as well as putting on amazing concerts with fantastic musicians for everyone to enjoy. Elgar was right.

Sheffield Chamber Music Festival starts this week, running from 17 to 25 May 2024. More information can be found here.