The Bridgewater Hall’s 30th Anniversary Concert
Johnny James, Managing EditorBook now
The Bridgewater Hall's 30th Anniversary Concert
Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.
Anniversary concerts tend to celebrate what’s already happened. The Bridgewater Hall’s works a little differently. Its centrepiece is a debut – the first performance of a newly formed Greater Manchester Youth Orchestra – and nearly all of the guest artists are contemporary Manchester names, spanning jazz, grime, drag and genre-hopping strings.
The concert is one part of the venue’s wider 30th anniversary season, explored in full here. As well as some brilliant concerts by the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic, the International Concert Series reaches right across the globe, bringing orchestras from Ukraine, Germany and Japan – including the Osaka Philharmonic’s first ever visit, arriving on the back of a 160-year relationship between the two cities.
The focus of this one-off anniversary concert, though, sits much closer to home. The Greater Manchester Youth Orchestra’s debut is led artistically by the Untold Orchestra, who formed in Hulme in 2019 out of a small DIY project. They’ve since spent years since taking orchestral music into places it doesn’t usually reach, including years of community work rooted in Hulme and Moss Side. Choosing a project led by them, rather than a more conventional classical partner, feels like a considered decision.
Around that debut, broadcaster Karen Gabay hosts an evening of new arrangements of music by Stevie Wonder, Jamie Cullum, Laufey, Liza Minnelli and Herbie Hancock, performed by guest soloists including jazz pianist and producer Matt Wilde, drag performer and RuPaul’s Drag Race star Banksie, Moss Side grime and dancehall artist Roberto, Madchester’s powerhouse vocalist Rowetta and the RNCM-formed Vulva Voce, a genre-spanning string quartet fusing historical and original music to amplify music composed by women and underrepresented voices. Grime, dancehall, drag – not exactly a typical night at The Bridgewater Hall.
It’s a wide, deliberately mixed bill for a night that’s less about summing up 30 years than about what’s happening in Manchester now and, with the Greater Manchester Youth Orchestra’s debut, what comes next.
