Uniquely groundbreaking and exhilarating to watch and hear, the London Philharmonic Orchestra has been celebrated as one of the world’s great orchestras since Sir Thomas Beecham founded it in 1932. Our home is at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, where we’re at the beating heart of London’s cultural life. You’ll also find us at our resident venues in Brighton, Eastbourne and Saffron Walden, and on tour worldwide. In 2024 we celebrated 60 years as Resident Symphony Orchestra at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, combining the magic of opera with Glyndebourne’s glorious setting in the Sussex countryside.
Our Principal Conductors have included some of the greatest historic names like Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur. Edward Gardner has been our Principal Conductor since 2021, succeeding Vladimir Jurowski who in the same year became Conductor Emeritus. Karina Canellakis is our current Principal Guest Conductor, and Sir George Benjamin our Composer-in-Residence from September 2025.
We’re one of the world’s most-streamed orchestras, with over 15 million plays of our content each month. In 2024 we featured in a behind-the-scenes TV documentary series on Sky Arts: ‘Backstage with the London Philharmonic Orchestra’, which was nominated for a BAFTA. Since 2021 we’ve partnered with Marquee TV to broadcast selected live concerts to enjoy from your own living room.
We’re committed to nurturing the next generation of musicians and music-lovers: we love seeing the joy of children and families experiencing their first musical moments, and we’re passionate about inspiring schools and teachers through dedicated concerts, workshops, resources and training. Reflecting our values of collaboration and inclusivity, our OrchLab and Open Sound Ensemble projects offer music-making opportunities for adults and young people with disabilities and special educational needs.
Today’s young instrumentalists are the orchestra members of the future, and we have a number of opportunities to support their progression. Our LPO Junior Artists programme leads the way in creating pathways into the profession for young artists from under-represented communities, and our LPO Young Composers and Foyle Future Firsts schemes support the next generation of professional musicians, bridging the transition from education to professional careers. We also recently launched the LPO Conducting Fellowship, supporting the development of two outstanding early-career conductors from backgrounds under-represented in the profession.
For more info click here to visit the website of the London Philharmonic Orchestra