Canal Serenade

BCMG’s Canal Serenade is a celebration of Birmingham canals, with music travelling on the water by narrow boats to the point in Birmingham City Centre where the Main Line, the Fazeley and the Worcester Canals merge. It’s a serenade for a City that was built on investing in the new, with a proud tradition of bold and free-thinking, invention and making things happen, in much the same way as BCMG, for thirty years, has been forward looking, creative and daring to take risks.

Performance 1: Sunday 10 September, 4pm
Performance 2: Saturday 23 September, 2pm

Canal Serenade is a free outdoor performance – an exchange of musical ideas on a stretch of water where goods were once exchanged – with a single work jointly written by UK composer Richard Baker, and two composers new to BCMG, Cypriot Yannis Kyriakides and Czech Ondřej Adámek, for an array of instruments including trombone, accordion and percussion, voice and electronics. The compositions will be performed on three separate narrowboats, uniting at the meeting point of three canals. All three composers have recently visited Birmingham to explore the architecture and the geography of the City’s waterways together. Richard Baker and Ondřej Adámek’s new works have been commissioned as part of BCMG Sound Investment, with Yannis Kyriakides’s work commissioned by Gaudeamus.

Featuring Ex Cathedra and BEAST.

The performance on 23 September is part of Birmingham Weekender

We are most grateful for the advice and support of the Canal & River Trust in making Canal Serenade possible.