City of London Sinfonia (CLS)

Our collaborative approach and practice in healthcare, wellbeing and social care settings drives all our activity – both on and off the concert platform. The skills our musicians develop working in settings such as adolescent psychiatric care units, children's hospitals, care homes, hospices, early years and family centres, and community health centres inform the way they engage with audiences in concerts, and our relaxed concerts allow audiences to move around the space if they wish.

Our goal is to create engaging, enjoyable, and enriching musical experiences on and off the concert stage. With over 30 years of experience working in health and social care settings, we are committed to demonstrating how music can enhance the health and wellbeing of people in isolation.

Help us to share live music

Like many charities, we have been impacted by the decline in public, local, and business investment and funding over the last few years, and the cost of living crisis is only making things harder - not just for us, but for the participants and audiences we work with. We are one of three orchestras which, combined, contribute 37% of the £1.6m that UK orchestras invest in healthcare. 

Only a small portion of our £1.2 million operating budget comes from concert ticket sales, and we have not raised our ticket prices during the cost-of-living crisis as we want music to be accessible to all. This includes our 5IVER scheme, providing £5 tickets to students and under-25 year olds, and concession tickets.

Supporters like you are crucial to our ability to plan and protect the orchestra's ongoing activities, and to continue bringing music to those who otherwise may not have access.

Sharing your love of music could help us to:

• Protect our ongoing programmes in hospitals, hospices, family centres, healthcare centres, community venues and care homes which aim to reach 1,500 people annually.
• Promote wider access to classical music through affordable ticketing for young people, students, and jobseekers
• Create an inclusive platform for guest artists and career pathways for emerging artists into classical music in our concerts.

What people say:

“One of those special qualities is the way that CLS concerts fuse a serious belief in and commitment to the music performed with a desire to enable audiences to engage with that music in a sincere and comfortable way”. 

- Opera Today review of This is CLS, our 50th anniversary concert in 2022

“I learnt that I'm capable of doing more than what I thought I was capable of doing. I found that I have got a voice and I can use it. The speaking voice as well - I used to be quiet, let other people have the ideas, let other people voice their opinions. And I would just go along and say, ‘I'm happy to do anything’. Now I am still easy-going, but I've just got my ideas, and I can voice my ideas as well. They just don't stay my head, I can get them out there. My confidence has grown with it.”

- A participant at St Christopher’s Hospice

“Why is [working with CLS] important? Because for these young people it is desperately hard for them to make sense of their own lives and what is going on for them. To be in a psychiatric hospital is in itself traumatic, accepting the fact that you're ill. What music does is it takes something which is not in any way related to personal life, space, experience, but allows you to share something instantaneously which must be healthy, it must be healthy and it must build so many aspects of self-esteem... happiness and engagement and seeing that happen is magical." 

- Dr John Ivens, Head Teacher at Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School on CLS' award winning Sound Young Minds' project 

Watch our musicians in action 

Sound Play - our work with early years children and their families

Room to Room Music - our work in care homes