London Sinfonietta
Chair of the Council (Board)
*Application deadline: Friday 18 December 2020*
The London Sinfonietta seeks a new Chair of the Council (the board of trustees) to succeed Paul Zisman who rotates off after 10 years of service.
The London Sinfonietta is one of the world’s leading contemporary music organisations having shaped the art-form and inspired new practice. It commissions and champions music by living composers to new audiences; provides music projects for schools and communities; and supports young performing and composing talent.
The Chair plays a crucial role in providing leadership and direction to the Council and ensuring good governance. It is a non-executive role and works on setting the overall strategic objectives for the organisation in consultation with the other members of the Council and with the Chief Executive and senior management staff. The Chair helps to promote the organisation to key stakeholders; current and future funders; and by attending concerts and events as often as possible.
Artistic & operational leadership of the organisation is delegated to the Chief Executive & Artistic Director (Andrew Burke) and his management team. The Chair will need to develop strong working relationships with the Chief Executive & Artistic Director, other senior management staff and the ensemble’s 18 Principal Players.
The essential requirement of any applicant is a commitment both to the contemporary arts and to sustaining the breadth of work and reputation of the ensemble across the UK and abroad. The London Sinfonietta particularly welcomes interest from people currently under-represented within Board positions. These include, but are not limited to, women, those from the LGBT+ community, people with disabilities, and those from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background.
About the London Sinfonietta
The London Sinfonietta is one of the world’s leading contemporary music ensembles. Formed in 1968, our commitment to making new music has seen us commission 450 works and premiere hundreds more. Our ethos is to commission and perform music from the best composers living today, performed by world-class musicians. We are a bold and innovative organisation that seeks to engage and inspire a world-wide audience by curating ambitious and risk-taking concert formats and projects. From musical messages to the government, to operas about climate change – we’re not afraid to make a statement. We regularly collaborate with other musicians, artists and contemporary art forms which helps us reach a wider audience. The organisation is committed to involving the public in its work – it is renowned for its education & community programme, which has evolved over the past 35 years.
Resident at Southbank Centre and Artistic Associate at Kings Place, with a busy touring schedule across the UK and abroad, our core eighteen Principal Players represent some of the best musicians in the world. Across our history, we have worked with many of the greatest living creators and interpreters of new music. The ensemble completed its 50th anniversary season in 2018 and celebrated its past relationship with composers of the post-war period including Stockhausen, Ligeti, Henze, Berio, Xenakis and Gorecki. Today the range of artistic collaborators includes composers Sir George Benjamin, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, George Lewis, Tansy Davies, Hannah Kendall, Beat Furrer, Kaija Saariaho, Enno Poppe, Steve Reich and Michel van de Aa, and cross-disciplinary artists such as Mica Levi, Matthew Herbert, Mira Calix, Christian Marclay and many more.
The next phase of the organisation’s work includes on-going associations with UK organisations such as the Royal Opera and Ballet, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Music Theatre Wales, the Central St Martins School of Art and the Royal Academy of Music as well as other UK centres and venues such as the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Wiltshire Music Centre, Turner Sims Southampton and the Warwick Arts Centre. The London Sinfonietta is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation from 2018-2023. The organisation receives regular national press attention for its work, not least because of its ambitious programme of new pieces and projects, but also the quality of its performances.
If you are interested to apply, please send a curriculum vitae and a supporting statement to Régis Cochefert, London Sinfonietta Council to the email address recruitment@londonsinfonietta.org.uk. If you prefer to post, please mark your letter CONFIDENTIAL and send to
Régis Cochefert
London Sinfonietta
c/o Kings Place
90 York Way
London
N1 9AG
Application deadline: Friday 18 December 2020
“The world’s top new-music ensemble” The Times, January 2018
“this excellent London Sinfonietta concert conducted by the young Zimbabwean-born Vimbayi Kaziboni” **** The Times, for Yet Unheard, a concert of music by black composers, October 2020
It was simply music, alive and unstoppable, rolling off the platform towards an audience that just gobbled it up” ***** The Times, for Viaduct with Marius Neset, November 2019
“As gripping avante-gard orchestral theatre, it has never been surpassed” ***** The Times, for Stockhausen’s Trans, December 2017
“The orchestra maintained an astonishing intensity of communication. An enthralling performance” ***** The Guardian for Haas’ in vain, April 2016
