The symphony orchestra and its repertoire is one of the great creations of Western culture, yet today it finds itself at a crossroads. In an increasingly multicultural world, it is becoming ever more conspicuous that its audience remains overwhelmingly white, not only in terms of race, but very often in hair colour. Its claims on limited state funding, for many years scarcely questioned, are increasingly open to challenge.

So can orchestral music reach out to embrace a more culturally diverse audience? In Birmingham, tipped to become Britain's first black majority city by 2020 (coincidentally the CBSO's centenary year), it is an even more pressing issue than in many other European cities. This is the background to the CBSO's Harmony Project, which will concentrate on building bridges with three different minority groups, Indian, Afro-Caribbean and Chinese, over the next three years. It is beginning with the Classic Asia thread, which weaves its way through the second half of the 2003-04 season, exploring the interchange between India and Western music, and featuring two major figures in contemporary Indian music in A.R. Rahman and Nitin Sawhney. “It's a cultural diversity action plan, but absolutely with artistic things at its centre,” says CBSO Director of Communications Sarah Gee. “We thought it would be a good opportunity to take our existing audience on a journey with us but also attract new people by providing them with a wider range of entry points.”

The boldest move in the latter direction has been to team up with Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman, the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber showcased in the musical Bombay Dreams and a superstar who has sold more than 40 million records worldwide. Rahman will conduct the CBSO in two concerts on 5 and 6 March in a programme of his music from Bombay Dreams and hit films including Lagaan and Roja. He has also been commissioned to write a piece for the Orchestra, inspired by Persian legend, which will be premiered later in the year.

“There are a whole number of firsts for him,” says Sarah Gee. “He hasn’t conducted a symphony orchestra in concert before, though he conducts in the studio, and he hasn’t written a concert piece. He’s such a huge star. When he came over we took him to a restaurant in Stoney Lane and the cab driver was driving along with his mouth open and eventually said ‘It is you!’”

“In May we're doing a Family Concert with Nitin Sawhney. He's writing a piece for us and it will have ‘windows’ in it to have music inserted from educational projects we're doing. I think he's a fascinating person because he covers so many styles. Again, he's a really big name.”

Other collaborations during Classic Asia have included the Sabri Ensemble and Samyo, who each prefaced a performance of Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie in January to highlight its eastern influences, and SAMPAD, the Birmingham-based South Asian arts development agency, whose director Piali Ray is choreographing a dance performance as part of a rare performance of Holst’s chamber opera Savitri on 18 May. This concert is a real showcase for youth talent, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus singing an excerpt from Holst's Hymns from the Rig Veda as well as providing the female chorus for Savitri.

“The relationship with SAMPAD has been really helpful,” Sarah Gee enthuses. “They too are very interested in diversifying their audience. They've given us all sorts of hints and clues on marketing events to the Asian community. We've pulled together a community panel of people who can help us. There are about ten people who sit upon that, mainly from the Indian community.”

The choice of the Indian community as the first target for the Harmony Project was indicated by the fact that it fits the classical music audience in an important respect. “We wanted to start with the Indian community for several reasons,” Sarah Gee explains. “Firstly, the link between Indian and Western music is quite strong. The other thing, from an audience development point of view, is that the most important determining factor is terminal age of education. The Indian community is the highest achieving educationally, and therefore should be more inclined to attend classical concerts.”

Still, organisations like the CBSO have some learning to do about how to get the word out within the community. For example, the pivotal role played by the Milan Sweet Centres in Handsworth and Sparkbrook as an unofficial box office is something you have to be alerted to (incidentally, if you are thinking of getting your CBSO tickets from there in future, I can recommend the mixed pakora). “It's been quite a challenge to us to find these ways but it's enabled us to be quite creative,” says Sarah Gee. “We're looking forward to it. We really don’t know how it's going to go, but we can't sit back and do nothing.”

Copyright © CBSO 2004