Birmingham Opera Company to Hold BREAKING THE ICE Symposium After Show, 4/9

To accompany Birmingham Opera Company's new production of Michael Tippett's opera The Ice Break(from 3 April), the company is also organizing 'BREAKING THE ICE', a series of events designed to encourage discussion around the relationship of art to society. What responsibility does the artist have to society and vice versa?

One key element of Breaking the Ice will be a symposium.

The panel event will take place on Thursday 9 April, 3pm - 6pm, at the B12 Warehouse, a former warehouse temporarily converted for The Ice Break. It will be free, but ticketed.

The panel will include:

• David Edgar (Chair) - playwright
• Andrew Gourlay - conductor
• Mischa Scorer - award-winning documentary film maker, friend of Tippett and creator of "Poets in a Barren Age- Sir Michael Tippett- One Pair of Eyes"
• Graham Vick - Artistic Director, Birmingham Opera Company

With contributions from event curator and Tippett expert Oliver Soden and other invited guests.

Birmingham Opera Company has a strong tradition of mirroring the social diversity of its home city by working with volunteer performers, as well as top professional opera singers, to create world class opera. All BOC's productions include a large ethnically and socially diverse chorus of volunteer singers drawn from local areas. The chorus is mentored by 12 emerging artists, 6 of whom are from BAME backgrounds. In the principal cast 6 out of 10 soloists are from BAME backgrounds.

Birmingham Opera Company have also announced the names of the more than 50 local organisations they will be working with - in every district of Birmingham - on Breaking the Ice. Those organisations include Brasshouse Language School in Edgbaston, MIND in Erdington, Joseph Chamberlain College in Hall Green, NACRO in Hodge Hill, Birmingham Asylum Seekers and Refugees Association in Ladywood, The Factory Youth Group in Northfield, the Somali Project in Perry Barr, St Andrew's Hospital in Selly Oak, the YMCA Disability Group in Sutton Coldfield and St Basil's in Yardley. BOC will also be working with MAC Birmingham, Birmingham Central Mosque, Midland Heart Association, Writers Without Borders and Birmingham University.

Michael Tippett's THE ICE BREAK will be performed in an inner city warehouse with a cast of international soloists, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and a chorus of 150 singing and acting volunteers drawn from all the peoples of the city.

Principal cast: Andrew Slater (Lev), Nadine Benjamin (Nadia), Ross Ramgobin (Yuri), Stephanie Corley(Gayle), Chrystal E Williams (Hannah), Ta'u Pupu'a (Olympion), John Colyn-Gyeantey (Luke), Adam Green (Lieutenant), Anna Harvey and Meili Li (both Astron).

The production will be designed by Stuart Nunn, with lighting design by Giuseppe di Iorio, and choreography by Ron Howell.

In the International Opera Awards 2015, Birmingham Opera Company's production of Khovanskygate: A National Enquiry is nominated for Best New Production and Graham Vick for Best Director.

Birmingham Opera Company's triumphant 2012 staging of Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht, often previously thought to be unstageable, received public and critical acclaim. Featuring camels, a floating orchestra and a string quartet performing from helicopters, it won the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Opera and Music Theatre and was nominated in the World Premiere category at the inaugural International Opera Awards.

Arts Council England is supporting The Ice Break with a £325,000 investment from its National Lottery-funded Exceptional Awards programme, which was set up so that arts organisations could respond to extraordinary one-off opportunities with projects that are nationally significant.

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