This Special Concert Will Celebrate the County on Yorkshire Day
As part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, a 1930s Art Deco building has been brought back to life and the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra are leading a concert to celebrate its reopening
Yorkshire-born and -based orchestral conductor and composer, Ben, is leading Yorkshire’s cultural renaissance. With 25 years of experience working in the music industry, Ben has held a BBC Music Fellowship and worked with orchestras throughout the UK and Europe. ‘The big part of my art, and the main reason why I do it, is that I’m convinced classical music can tell a story more eloquently and beautifully than any other art form that humans have ever invented,’ he tells us. ‘And I tell our story from a predominantly working class, Northern perspective using this art form. That’s what motivates me in the industry.’
With Leeds-based concert promoter Jamie Hudson, Ben reformed the disbanded Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra in 2021 and supported more than 50 talented Northern musicians who were hit hard by the pandemic. Playwright Alan Bennett and poet Ian McMillan are Honorary Patrons. ‘The Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra existed in the first half of the 20th century and it had quite a decent reputation until the 1950s,’ Ben explains. ‘We restarted the orchestra as a realistic vehicle to get work in the arts in Yorkshire (so you didn’t have to move away) but also to tell the story of our county and have an ensemble that can do that. That’s what motivated us to get the orchestra back up and running again.’ Today, the orchestra aims to be the leading cultural voice of the North.
Since 2021 the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra has worked on various projects across the county. ‘We’ve done big outdoor gigs at Harewood House and the Museum Gardens in York, and we’ve also collaborated with Bradford Opera Festival to do the Barber of Seville,’ Ben continues, ‘and the whole thing was done in Yorkshire dialect which Ian McMillan translated.’
On Yorkshire Day (1st August) the orchestra will lead a celebratory concert at the newly restored Bradford Live, which was saved from demolition and has been restored to its former glory as an entertainment hub for the city. Over the years Bradford Live has been known as the New Victoria, the Gaumont and the Odeon and features an auditorium, ballroom and restaurant.
‘We’ve got this new 3,000-seater venue in the middle of Bradford and the opening gig will see Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra performing Yorkshire Calling on Yorkshire Day in Bradford, in the year when Bradford is the city of culture. It’s dream gig territory,’ says Ben. ‘It’s all coming together!’
This special concert will celebrate all things Yorkshire, with guests including Ian McMillan, Leeds-based international concert pianist Yuanfan Yang and the BBC’s Bantam of the Opera Choir. Chris Kamara, a former manager of Bradford City, will be leading the Bantam of the Opera Choir during their performance. Ben says the audience can expect ‘passion, power, and a proper Yorkshire celebration.’
The Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra will perform A Northern Score, featuring poems written and narrated by Ian, celebrating influential Northerners through the ages (Emily Brontë, the James Bond composer John Barry, and Olympic boxer Nicola Adams), set to an original score written by Ben. ‘It’s a story of our county in people who’ve really shaped it with Ian’s poetry read by Ian over a massive orchestral score that I’ve written,’ Ben says. ‘It’s big, full, symphonic orchestral stuff with purpose-written poetry over it, and it’s the story of our county in sound. It’s so exciting and such a privilege to get to share it. I’m both nervous and proud.’
Ben is passionate about the arts in Yorkshire. ‘I realised that this art form, which could be seen as elitist, is available to everyone,’ he says. ‘I want it to be available here. I want national level classical music available here, for us. There are some groups that do it. Opera North do it fantastically well. But there’s space for more of it.
‘Bradford City of Culture is great. There’s loads of really cool stuff happening, but that has to leave a legacy. What Bradford City of Culture has done well is that a lot of this is home made. We need to make our art here. That’s what made us call it Yorkshire Calling. It’s not Yorkshire absorbing the art of elsewhere. It’s Yorkshire making art and that art that’s made here will then go out to everywhere else. We’re showing that we can be a big player in the arts in this country.’
Ben’s advice for budding artists is to ‘stay true to the art you know’. ‘I made that mistake earlier in my career – trying to change what I do – but you have to stay honest to the art you make,’ he says. ‘Don’t expect to make a lot of money quickly but be in it for the right reasons. Make the art you feel you need to make, and be brave enough to put it out there. For years I didn’t. Trust it’ll find the audience it deserves.’
