RPS award winners announced

The Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) Awards took place yesterday evening at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. The evening, hosted by BBC Radio 3 presenters Jess Gillam and Tom McKinney with trophies presented by RPS Chair Angela Dixon, saw 13 awards presented to musicians and organisations across the sector.

The 2025 Conductor award went to Kazuki Yamada for his work as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO). In his citation, the RPS noted Yamada status as a ‘local hero’, and Yamada was quick to share his award with his community, confirming his intention to display the award at the orchestra’s Shireland CBSO Academy to inspire young conductors.

Yamada said: ‘This is such a special moment for me.  My predecessor at the CBSO, Sir Simon Rattle, was the first to win this coveted conductor award back in 1990, and every CBSO Music Director since then has likewise been honoured in this way. The CBSO is a big family, and I am so happy to be part of it. In recent years, we have been doing something so special in this city. We are pushing at the opportunity of what an orchestra can be in today’s world and celebrating it as a valued and cherished part of the city’s artistic life. I cannot express my gratitude to you all enough, and I am truly humbled.’

This year’s awards placed particular emphasis on disabled members of the music industry, with the Ensemble Award presented to the pioneering Paraorchestra, while Belfast’s Open Arts Community Choir and its dedicated music director Beverley McGeown were voted winners of the Inspiration Award celebrating the UK’s non-professional ensembles. Welsh composer Sarah Lianne Lewis won the Chamber-Scale Composition Award for letting the light in, a work for solo piano created as part of Drake Music Scotland and the Disabled Artist Network’s Beyond Borders, Beyond Barriers initiative. It features on the first commercial album to showcase UK disabled composers, produced by 2025 Gamechanger Award-winning label NMC Recordings.

The full list of 2025 winners is included below:

• Chamber-scale composition – Sarah Lianne Lewis for her solo piano work letting the light in
• Conductor – CBSO music director Kazuki Yamada
• Ensemble – Paraorchestra for its work putting disabled musicians centre-stage and pioneering how orchestras and audiences interact
• Gamechanger – NMC Recordings for its work giving ‘vital voice and visibility to composers’
• Impact – Streetwise Opera’s Re:Discover Festival bringing together people from homelessness centres across Nottingham, Manchester and London to devised their own operas
• Inspiration – Belfast’s Open Arts Community Choir and music director tireless Beverley McGeown for ‘uniting disabled and non-disabled people from different backgrounds through the power of song’
• Instrumentalist – cellist Laura van der Heijden
• Large-scale composition – Katherine Balch for whisper concerto for Cellist Zlatomir Fung and the BBC Philharmonic
• Opera And Music Theatre – Welsh National Opera for Death in Venice – ‘Audiences cheered the bravery, resilience and artistry of WNO’
• Series And Events –James MacMillan’s Ayrshire festival, the Cumnock Tryst
• Singer – soprano Claire Booth –
• Storytelling – BBC Radio 3’s Classical Africa series for ‘opening our ears to a complex and captivating tapestry of sounds and ideas’.
• Young Artist – GBSR Duo, comprising percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys

RPS Awards partner BBC Radio 3 will broadcast a special RPS Awards programme at 7.30pm this evening, and a film of the RPS Awards presentation will be available to watch for free on the RPS website for one month from 17 March.