City of London Sinfonia (CLS) is an English chamber orchestra based in London. It is the orchestral home to over 40 musicians, who perform together across more than 75 performances and spend over 150 days delivering participation projects each year.

The Orchestra presents the highest quality performances by removing the barriers between musicians and audiences, allowing them to experience the life-changing power of music.

CLS invites jazz, folk and contemporary musicians, artists in film, dance or visual art or with explorations of science, history or philosophy, to enhance and transform performances, giving an extra dimension to new music and shedding new light on the familiar.

As part of their participation work, musicians of CLS work with young people with life-limiting, psychiatric conditions, schoolchildren in culturally-disadvantaged areas and older people who are struggling with grief and the loss of memory. CLS also performs in schools and nurseries; their music gives very young children the chance to experience the joy and fun of orchestras for the first time and lets them fall in love with it, opening a path to performing, firing their creativity, and boosting their learning.

I have had the great privilege of conducting the City of London Sinfonia at Opera Holland Park in every season since 2011. Over the years we have developed a wonderful rapport – a real sense of musical partnership – and I hugely look forward to our rehearsals and performances together. This is an orchestra of alert, open, agile, responsive and generous musicians. Moreover they are an exemplary opera orchestra – always sensitive to the challenges of the opera pit, the needs of the singers, and to the drama. They react in the moment throughout each performance, creating proper music theatre. No opera conductor could ask for more.
Matthew Kofi Waldren, Conductor