The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) has announced the programme for its 2024/25 season this week along with a new title for its music director Kazuki Yamada. Boasting free ‘pop-up’ performances at the city’s Bullring and New Street Station, the orchestra intends to showcase its range through the diversity of its programming. In addition to these announcements is a policy change which now allows audience members to ‘take photographs and short video clips’ when attending concerts. This has been met with some resistance, most notably in a recent clash with Tenor soloist Ian Bostridge who stopped a concert to ask the audience to put their phones away, saying ‘The lights are shining directly in my eyes, it’s very distracting. Would you please put your phones down.’

In the orchestra’s vision statement, it says it aims to remove ‘perceived rules of a traditional concert’ and that audiences are invited to clap whenever they like, going on to add ‘We are doing these things because we believe that the best music in the world should be for everyone’.

The CBSO’s 2024/25 programme is available to view here.