Our New Board Members Our Board of Trustees helps steer our organisation. They provide us with passion and expertise, which drive us to excel. Recruiting for the Board is one of the most important things we have to do, and we are delighted to have four new highly skilled individuals joining us. “This is an exciting time for Manchester Camerata with ambitious plans ahead, focusing even more on the impact our work can make.  We are incredibly excited to welcome these extremely skilled four new individuals to our Board of Trustees. We are sure they will help us thrive, and help us continue t ..read more

“A joy in telling stories in music.” “A joy in telling stories in music.” We were recently fortunate enough to play host to Robert Hugill of the music blog Planet Hugill. Robert spent time with us, watching us perform and learning more about our work within the community. The result is this fantastic article covering all aspects of our work, from our Music Cafés at The Monastery to our recent collaboration with AFRODEUTSCHE for Manchester International Festival. Read how this big melting pot of activity makes us who we are here. Read Article > Robert Hugill – picture by Robert Piwko ..read more

The People Make The Place The People Make The Place is a celebration of our home at The Monastery Manchester, Gorton. ‘It’s brilliant – it brings the community together’ Carol, audience member. Watch now > Local East Manchester schools, the HideOut Youth Zone choir, Gorton Voice choir and participants from our dementia Music Café wrote and then performed their own songs to a capacity audience, accompanied by our world-class orchestra in The Great Nave in Gorton’s Monastery. They even learnt to sign a song, thanks to the School Of Sign Language Blackburn (Deaf Village North West). There wa ..read more

Principal Horn player Naomi Atherton on BBC Radio 3’s Inside Music Listen back to our Principal Horn player Naomi Atherton on BBC Radio 3’s Inside Music talk about music that made her think about her instrument differently. Naomi chooses music from Schumann, Richard Strauss and contemporary artist Alabaster dePlume among others. Click here to listen > ..read more

‘A perfect piece of music’ – The Strad premierre our recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. Watch our Principal Cellist Hannah Roberts play Elgar, conducted by our Music Director, Gábor Takács-Nagy, in this video. The wonderful The Strad magazine recently premiered this piece with a few short words from Hannah too. You can read the full article here. If you live in Manchester, you can catch Hannah & Gábor performing this piece together (and more) at our joint birthday celebration with the RNCM next week. Book tickets to our performance at the RNCM > ..read more

The People Make The Place – Mag North Review Last week we had one heck of a party! The People Make The Place was a sold-out, jammed-pack celebration of our home of Gorton. St Peter’s RC High School, Old Hall Drive Academy, All Saints Primary School, HideOut Youth Zone and participants from our very own Music Cafe performed on stage songs they had written accompanied by our world-class musicians and composers. We were so proud of everything they achieved. As well as our local superstars, we had the world premiere of ‘Carved in Gorton Stone’, composed by Alex Ho, who was on loan to us fro ..read more

BBC One ‘Dementia, Music and Us’ If you live in the North West, make sure to tune into BBC One Tonight (Fri 25 Nov) at 7.30pm to watch ‘Dementia, Music and Us’, a documentary about our work with people living with dementia.  This 30-minute documentary follows Keith, who attends our Music Café in Wigan. Keith was diagnosed with dementia when he was 53 and along with his partner, Joan, he has been attending our music-making workshops for people living with dementia for over five years. Watch their story and see the crucial positive impact our music-making sessions have ..read more

★★★★★ “serious goosebumps time” Manchester Evening News ★★★★★ “serious goosebumps time” Manchester Evening News Our recent Joy Division Orchestrated show with Peter Hook at Manchester’s O2 Apollo received a big 5-Star review from Dianne Bourne at the Manchester Evening News. Click here to read the full review > Photo Dominic Simpson ..read more

Samantha McShane appointed to Manchester Camerata as Creative Director. Samantha McShane, who previously spent 4 years at Manchester Camerata as Head of Creative Programming until 2017, returns to the orchestra to take up the role of Creative Director in November. Samantha has been Head of Artistic Planning at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland since 2017. She will be replacing James Thomas who is leaving the orchestra to join the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Sage Gateshead as Director of Royal Northern Sinfonia & Classical Programme. Samantha McShane, incoming Creative Director at Manch ..read more

The Experiment We pride ourselves on being relentlessly pioneering and have a long history of collaborative research. Be it working with top academics in the field of dementia or working with new technologies to explore what’s next in the world of performance; as an organisation, we put research at the heart of what we do. In our latest project, we are teaming up with The University of Manchester and the RNCM to investigate the psychological and physiological differences between experiencing live and digital music. Dr Michelle Phillips, Deputy Head of Undergraduate Programmes at RNCM, s ..read more