Rooted in the East of England, where it is the only professional orchestra working throughout the region, Britten Sinfonia has established since its founding in 1992 a national and international reputation as one of today’s finest ensembles. It creates impactful and inspirational musical experiences through its adventurous programming and innovative formats—such as its immersive Surround Sound Playlist—and through its projects created especially for school pupils, hospital patients and local communities.

‘Innovative as always’ (The Guardian, 2025), it is equally renowned for the remarkable breadth of its collaborations—from Steve Reich, Mahan Esfahani and Sarah Connolly to Anoushka Shankar, Brad Mehldau and Jacob Collier—and for its performance of new music. Over three decades, Britten Sinfonia has premiered approaching 300 works, recent composers including Thomas Adès, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Dani Howard, James MacMillan, Joseph Phibbs, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Dobrinka Tabakova and Huw Watkins. The nurturing of emerging compositional voices is a priority, too, through the Magnum Opus and Opus 1 schemes.

Alongside regular concert appearances throughout the East of England, Britten Sinfonia performs frequently in London’s Barbican Centre, Wigmore Hall and King’s Place, as well as at UK festivals such as Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Brighton, Norfolk & Norwich, and the BBC Proms. Abroad, the orchestra has toured to China, India and South America, and appeared in venues such as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, New York’s Lincoln Center, Paris’s Philharmonie and Rome’s Sistine Chapel, where it has premiered two major works by James MacMillan with The Sixteen.

Britten Sinfonia’s extensive discography includes an arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations on Harmonia Mundi, Delius’s Hassan on Chandos, and 20th-century American works with Alison Balsom on Warner. For Hyperion, the orchestra has recorded a number of discs with conductor Stephen Layton and Polyphony, including Handel’s Messiah.