University News Last updated 10 April
Welcome to RBC This Week, at the end of a long and immensely productive spring term. Our students now have a short break before they return for their end-of-year recitals and a string of public performances to round off the academic year – and for some, their time at RBC.
It makes me happy to be able to report that attendances at our public events in the five venues at RBC have shown a sharp increase over the past year. From August 2024 through to the beginning of April 2025, we have hosted 39% more events and welcomed 61% more attendees to these events than the equivalent period in the previous year.
This is a real vote of confidence in the quality of what is being presented by our students, and in the range of external public performances that we are presenting here, based on dozens of long-standing artistic partnerships within the city and beyond.
It is also testament to the hard work of our Events and Marketing teams, and to your generosity and curiosity in visiting us so often. And beyond all this, it is of course so much more encouraging and inspiring for our students to be performing to larger audiences!
Among the events we have recently announced for this summer, I am delighted to be welcoming the brilliant Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) Kazuki Yamada to conduct the RBC Symphony Orchestra for the first time. He will share our end-of-term concert on Friday 20 June with Daniele Rosina, and as well as Dvorak’s Symphony No.8 with Kazuki, there will be a rare opportunity to hear Vaughan Williams’ ravishingly beautiful Serenade to Music, sung by 16 soloists from our superb Vocal and Operatic Department. Our postgraduate actors are also taking to the stage in May and June, for productions which include Chekhov’s The Seagull.
But before all of this, we have another new and exciting event to enjoy: We have been working for a year now with the team behind the Serendipity Festival, India’s biggest and most varied arts festival, which has been running in Goa for almost a decade. I was lucky enough to be invited to visit their last festival in December, and the range and quality of what was on offer – across pretty much every art form – was astonishing and thoroughly engaging.
We are very honoured that for their first venture beyond India, they are coming to Birmingham for a 4-day festival across the Bank Holiday at the end of May (Friday 23 – Monday 26 May). We will be hosting several dozen events and exhibitions across RBC venues and at Symphony Hall, where the celebrated RBC Folk Ensemble will make their first-ever appearance! All the events are free to attend, and you can view more details on the Serendipity Festival event page.
I hope you will continue to join us in the coming months – but before then, I would like to wish you a happy and peaceful Easter break.
Stephen Maddock
Principal