Symphony Hall presents prestigious international orchestras and is also home to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Complementing the classical programme is the best in jazz, world music, folk, rock, pop and stand-up comedy. The Hall also plays an important role in the life of the region and is regularly used for community events, graduation ceremonies and conferences. In all over 370,000 people attend around 320 events at Symphony Hall every year.

Its 2262-seat auditorium is a model of modern concert hall design and its superb acoustics, engineered by Artec Consultants Inc, New York, are the benchmark by which new concert halls are measured. In 2001 the Hall was completed with the installation of the 6000-pipe Symphony Organ.

Symphony Hall. Credit: Mike Gutteridge.

The Symphony Organ

The Symphony Organ was inaugurated on Friday 19 October 2001 as part of Symphony Hall's 10th Birthday celebrations.

It was designed and built by hand using traditional craftsmanship by Johannes Klais Orgelbau, a long-established family firm from Bonn that has an enviable worldwide reputation.
The organ has over 6,000 pipes, which stretch over 2½ miles when laid end to end and weigh more than 30 tonnes. It is nearly 65 feet tall and contains wood from over 20 massive trees. The pipes, ranging from 32 foot to 6 inches in length, are made from a range of woods and metals including oak, fir, and pine plus soft metal alloys from tin, lead, and zinc.

The console (keyboard) attached to the main instrument has a mechanical action that links the keys directly to the pipes. A second, moveable console allows the organ to be played from the platform and these keys are linked to the action of the main instrument via electronics.

Artists including Thomas Trotter, Marie-Claire Alain, Dame Gillian Weir, Carlo Curley and Simon Preston have all given concerts as part of our International Concert Season. Birmingham has a long tradition of lunchtime organ music and the Symphony Organ's monthly lunchtime concerts (featuring Thomas Trotter, organist in residence) are hugely popular, with enjoyable programmes introduced by the players from the platform.

The organ programme also includes the screening of silent movie classics with organ accompaniment – Nosferatu, Metropolis and The Iron Mask being just three – and family organ concerts.

Symphony Hall has commissioned new works for the instrument including a children's piece for organ and narrator, by Bob Chilcott and Humphrey Carpenter, and solo works by James MacMillan, Michael Nyman, Judith Bingham, Dominic Muldowney, Graham Fitkin, Huw Watkins and Gabriel Jackson.