A message from outgoing director Adam Szabo

Humble beginnings: the first-ever Manchester Collective gig

We played our first hometown gig in February 2017 – not in Manchester, but over the river in the basement of Islington Mill, Salford. As you’d expect from an old mill in the middle of winter, it was freezing; we were wrapped in blankets for most of the day. The programme was vintage Manchester Collective – some Heinrich Biber, a John Cage quartet, some Purcell, some Taverner, and 'Transfigured Night’ by Arnold Schoenberg. At one point the players sang. There was chat. There was a harpsichord. We had our rug and our IKEA lights. And somehow it all made sense.

In our wildest dreams, Rakhi and I could never have imagined that seven years and over 50 touring projects later, Manchester Collective would still be growing, changing, thriving, and of course, creating new music.

Our aim at the start of this mad project was to create ‘radical human experiences’. We wanted our music to crack open people’s chests and prise its way into their hearts. Today, the vision of the organisation is grander, more ambitious – but the message is the same: ‘To reshape the future of classical music by creating radical artistic work in the north of England’.

As the time comes for me to move on from my role at the Collective, I’m comforted by the fact that we’ve started to realise that vision. I also know that the real work of the Collective is only just beginning – and I can’t wait to see what the future will bring.

The stakes have truly never been higher. There are powers who would see a managed decline in UK classical music – a sad and slow diminishing of our ambition and reach. We won’t have it. To paraphrase Leonard Bernstein, our mission must be to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. That’s half the job. The other half is to reach audiences with that work – to connect with people from diverse backgrounds and to share unforgettable artistic experiences with them.

The Collective are in pole position to do this work. We started out as a group of musicians, fuelled up on big dreams, a love for the art form, coffee, and a healthy dose of naivety. Today, we move into the future as something more than that: as a true Collective, an organisation, strategically led, with plans for projects and schemes and collaborations many years into the future.

I’ve been so proud and lucky to work with this team. Without Rakhi, Linda, Joanne, Declan, Pareesa, Malc, our chair Helen, our magnificent players and collaborators, all of our friends at festivals and venues, the composer community, our board, and so many others who have been and continue to be a part of our journey, this would never have been possible. 

Thank you for everything, and toi toi for Act 2.

Adam Szabo is the outgoing Artistic Director & Chief Executive of Manchester Collective. Read the announcement here.