Covent Garden Sinfonia

The Covent Garden Sinfonia is a versatile orchestra founded in 2007 by conductor and long-serving artistic director Ben Palmer. The group often takes innovative approaches to familiar repertoire, as on their 2019 album The Four Seasons Recomposed, where composer Max Richter reimagines Vivaldi’s concertos through looping effects and montage. The Sinfonia also specialises in the performance of music live to film, and has given spectacular concert screenings of films such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Psycho and Casablanca. This has given rise to new soundtracks for films of the silent era: the Sinfonia has premiered scores by Neil Brand for Ernest Shackleton’s 1919 Antarctic documentary South, Frank Lloyd’s 1922 version of Oliver Twist and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927). The Sinfonia’s home venue is St. Paul’s, the famous Actors’ Church in Covent Garden, but they also regularly perform at the Royal Festival Hall, St. John’s Smith Square and at silent film festivals around the UK.