Andrew Jowett, Director of Town Hall and Symphony Hall, Birmingham has been awarded an OBE in HM The Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to music. The honour comes in the year Symphony Hall celebrates its 21st anniversary.
Andrew Jowett was appointed Director of Symphony Hall in 1988 – three years before it opened in 1991 to widespread public and critical acclaim – and also manages Town Hall, having overseen its hugely successful re-opening in 2007. During this time he has helped underpin Birmingham’s reputation as an international centre of cultural excellence, creating an outstanding artistic programme which appeals to a wide audience and establishing the two concert halls as ‘must play’ destinations for visiting artists of all genres. Hosting 600 events and welcoming over half a million people each year, Town Hall and Symphony Hall are a source of great pride to the people of Birmingham as well as being a major asset to the City’s local economy.
Andrew Jowett said “I am immensely proud to receive this honour for leading Town Hall and Symphony Hall Birmingham and it is particularly appropriate this year when Symphony Hall is celebrating its 21st anniversary. Running these two world renowned concert halls is an absolute joy and privilege and, in accepting this honour, I do so on behalf of everyone who has helped make them a major force on the national and international music scene, connecting over half a million people to music every year.”

The new Garsington Opera Pavilion at Wormsley, designed by Snell Associates, has won three awards from the RIBA – the RIBA Award, for its architectural excellence; the RIBA South Client of the Year Award; and the RIBA South Building of the Year Award. The awards were presented last night, Wednesday 20 June, at the 2012 RIBA Awards Ceremony at the Railway Museum, Swindon. These awards celebrate the best of UK Architecture. It has also been named one of the RIBA’s 50 best buildings of the year and is therefore a candidate for the Stirling Prize

The 600 seat summer Opera Pavilion, at Wormsley Park, home of the Getty Family, is situated within the lush pastoral country estate, conceived in the English tradition of a pavilion in a grand landscape.

Garsington Opera relocated to Wormsley in 2011 into its new pavilion that has been designed to complement and give unique views onto the outstandingly beautiful surrounding landscape. With its superb acoustics and comfortable seats, it is the perfect setting for opera performances of the very highest quality.

Anthony Whitworth-Jones General Director of Garsington Opera said: We are thrilled that our Opera Pavilion has been honoured in this way and we are delighted that our architect, Robin Snell, has been so successful in the way he has designed a pavilion that, at the same time, is uncompromisingly modern and yet settles so easily into its pastoral surroundings.

The season at Garsington Opera runs until 3 July with Vivaldi’s rarely performed L’Olimpiade, Offenbach’s charming operetta La Périchole and Mozart’s Don Giovanni . www.garsingtonopera.org

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