Stephen Newbould

After studying music at Manchester University, Stephen Newbould joined the staff of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, helping launch Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) from within the CBSO in 1987. After periods as the first Midlands Director of Yehudi Menuhin’s Live Music Now scheme and Music Officer for North West Arts Board, he returned to BCMG to run the pioneering Sound Investment commissioning scheme, and became the ensemble’s Artistic Director and Chief Executive in 2001. Under his leadership BCMG premiered over 100 new works and toured widely, appearing regularly at the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival, Barbican Centre and Wigmore Hall in the UK, in the US at Carnegie Hall, New York and the Library of Congress, Washington DC, in major European cities, on tour in India for the British Council, and in Mexico. At BCMG Stephen developed many initiatives bringing new music to new audiences, with the ensemble’s Shropshire Tours project winning a Royal Philharmonic Society Audience Development Award in 1995.

From 2017-19 Stephen was Chief Executive of Spitalfields Music, working with Artistic Curator André de Ridder to deliver the Spitalfields Festival’s RPS Award-winning Schumann Street project. In summer 2019 Stephen was appointed Consultant Music Advisor to Music Theatre Wales.  Stephen has been a regular chair and jury member for the RPS Awards and BASCA, is an Honorary Fellow of Birmingham Conservatoire, an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, and in 2011 received the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Leslie Boosey Award for services to contemporary music in the UK.