We entice and establish new audiences that include people who might not necessarily engage with concert music, through its format, combining classical music with vibrant storytelling.
Concert Theatre Works, Inc. is devoted to building new audiences for classical music.
We entice and establish new audiences that include people who might not necessarily engage with concert music, through its format, combining classical music with vibrant storytelling.
We use theatre and spectacle to make live music feel essential.
Believing stories are essential for the future of concert music, CTW tours theatrical elements to orchestras and small ensembles to mount game-changing spectacles in few rehearsals.
We are a US non-profit, a UK limited company, and an international leader in cutting edge performance.
What is ‘Concert-Theatre?’
- Music and theatre work together frequently but rarely equally. In opera, acting is subservient to the immense demands of the score. In theatre, musicians play second fiddle to the text. Concert-theatre asks the question: what happens when both elements are included equally?
- Humans are inherently interdisciplinary. Concertgoers are usually theatre audiences too, and we all possess finely attuned ears from a lifetime of listening to a broad range of musics. Our productions collapse the illusion of distance between the performing arts by revealing the incredible stories lurking just behind the standard repertoire. This makes musicians more visible, advocating for the survival of your local orchestra, and the preservation of music education. The resulting close collaborations allow artists to grow and appreciate their peers in new ways. Our financial model of touring allows several orchestras to benefit from the expensive commissioning of new work. An average year involves some 40 performances of six different shows touring internationally to 30 cities.
- We believe that our framework for an even balance of music and story, in the service of universal themes of our shared experience, is vital to the future of concert music.
We therefore employ actors, projections, lights, sound, illusions, juggling, architecture, and even food to serve an iconic piece of music in a dynamic, original way. We focus on marginalised stories to make the case for the performing arts as an urgent, political act. - Partners include The Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Silkroad Ensemble, Shakespeare’s Globe, The National Symphony Orchestra, The Gesualdo Six, Fretwork, City of London Sinfonia, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, The English Concert, The United Strings of Europe, and many others ensembles and festivals.
- Venues include The Kennedy Center, The Hollywood Bowl, Buckingham Palace, Washington National Cathedral, Tanglewood Music Center, The Barbican, Chicago Symphony Center, Southbank Centre, Southwark Cathedral, Wilton’s Music Hall, NYC’s United Palace, and Chautauqua.
Conductors include Andris Nelsons, Dame Jane Glover, Charles Dutoit, Bramwell Tovey, Louis Langree, Sakari Oramo, JoAnn Falletta, Trevor Pinnock, Hans Graf and Ken-David Masur. Soloists include Pekka Kuusisto, Alison Balsom, Camilla Tilling, Amanda Forsythe, Amy Dickson, and Soumik Datta. New collaborations include the puppetry masters Gyre & Gimble, composers Max Richter and Joanna Marsh, Gandini Juggling, and Iranian shadow puppeteer Hamid Rahmanian.
Board
Charles Schwager – Chairperson
Patti Whaley – Treasurer
Caroline Lawton – Secretary
Margaret Casely-Hayford CBE
Dominic Dowley
Joanie Speers
Dr. Lisa Wong
Staff
Artistic Director
Bill Barclay
Executive Producer
Carlos Diaz Stoop
Production Manager
Justin Seward
Associate Producer
Joy Burton
Graphic Designer
Hannah Yates
Resident Designers
Cristina Todesco, Charles Schoonmaker, Arthur Oliver, and Justin Seward
Board of Advisors
Dame Jane Glover- JoAnne Falletta
- Victoria Robey CBE
All contributions are fully tax-deductible as provided by law. Our productions are supported, in part, by private donations and from the Richenthal Family Foundation and the Shirley and Al Evenitsky Fund for Social Justice.
Concert Theatre Works is committed to ensuring the security and protection of the personal information that we process, and to provide a compliant and consistent approach to data protection. If you have any questions related to our GDPR compliance, please contact enquiries@concerttheatreworks.com
Explore our productions to find out more about our singular approach, and how concert theatre can bring something unexpected and exciting into your upcoming season.
Orchestral Partners
- The Boston Symphony Orchestra
- The London Philharmonic Orchestra
- The Cleveland Orchestra
- The BBC Symphony Orchestra
- The Los Angeles Philharmonic
- The New World Orchestra
- The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
- The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
- The Virginia Symphony Orchestra
- The City of London Sinfonia
- The St Louis Symphony Orchestra
- Music of the Baroque
- Handel & Haydn Society
- The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
- The Winston-Salem Symphony
- The Wichita Symphony Orchestra
- The Salina Symphony Orchestra
- The San Juan Symphony
- The Chautauqua Symphony
- The Harlem Chamber Players
Orchestral Partners
- Music of the Baroque
- The Gesualdo Six
- Oregon Bach Festival
- Music of the Baroque
- Fretwork
- Barokksolistene
- Handel & Haydn Society
- Tesserae Baroque
- The Dunedin Consort
- The English Concert
- The Sebastians
- Apollo’s Cabinet
- Portland Baroque Orchestra
- Festival Partners
- The Tanglewood
- Music Festival
- The Aldeburgh Festival
- Oxford Festival of the Arts
- Lammermuir Festival
- Canterbury Festival
Press for Secret Byrd
The New Yorker
“Quietly transfixing…In the atmospheric catacombs below Green-Wood Cemetery, the singers of Cathedra, supported by the string ensemble Abendmusik, enact an immersive ritual around a candlelit table, raising their voices, one to a part, in Byrd’s solemn strains.”
Charles Hutch Press
"This was something else: imaginative, authentic, and deeply moving...the finest imaginable tribute to the great man."
Opera News
"High drama...and excellent performances...An effective and compelling dramatic presentation, as well as a reminder of our hope for a world in which people's differences of belief are tolerated and respected."
Blogcritics
“What to do with an event that resists characterization? You could feel the composer’s heart and soul…The skill on hand was unequivocally impressive."
Financial Times
“That this all had a beautiful sound goes without saying; it also had a deep and beautiful spirit and effect that went beyond music. Secret Byrd mixes music, history and drama, and what emerges is an experience that is neither concert nor theatre, but something out of life itself."
Washington Classical Review
"An intriguing example of how to create a non-traditional concert experience... It enhances the context around the music instead of competing with it. Most importantly, the theatrical presentation serves the interests of the music rather than working against it, by allowing audiences a rare chance to experience expert singers performing this detailed, intimate music in close quarters."
Opera World
"Secret Byrd is a novel and engrossing way of bringing Renaissance music to the public and is done with an intimacy and imagination that embeds this music within the world."
Opera World
Few opportunities to hear [Byrd’s] music are as intimate or visceral as Bill Barclay’s “Secret Byrd,” an immersive program extremely on trend for classical music right now…The Gesualdo Six sang magnificently in tune; the ensemble was faultless. Their sound is precision-tooled for blend, perfectly rounded, and has the utmost ease and precision.
The Tablet
Secret Byrd ... is the brainchild of Bill Barclay, a well-established master of sui generis music-theatre events. This collaboration with the vocal ensemble The Gesualdo Six and viol consort Fretwork has his meticulous fingerprints all over it.
Early Music Review
If they haven’t already filmed this, they should for when the initial tour is over. In the meantime, do try to see it live
The Guardian
The spirit of clandestine celebration of a Catholic mass is at the heart of Bill Barclay’s Secret Byrd…The all-male voices ring out with intonational precision and an almost ecstatic connection to text that would have delighted Byrd.
The Guardian
Musically it’s glorious…chillingly authentic…ominous, buoyant and uplifting… What better way to open this year’s 400th anniversary celebrations.
The Observer
Effortless Perfection.