MRT sponsors 'Storytelling' award as BBC 3’s 'Classical Africa' triumphs at annual RPS awards

On 6 March 2025, MRT’s Lizzie Watson and Lucia Di Cicco joined the Royal Philharmonic Society for their annual awards night, one of the biggest events in the musical calendar. Hosted at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, we attended in our second year of support of the ‘Storytelling award’ – a prize given for ‘an imaginative entity which… furthered the understanding of classical music in the UK’.  

The award was won by BBC 3’s Classical Africa, a programme in which South African double bassist Leon Bosch explores the possibility of defining a distinctively African form of ‘Western classical’ music. With many African musicians sharing their insights, the notion of ‘African’ is dismantled through an exploration of the various nuances in classical music production on that vast continent. The interplay between Arab, eastern, western, southern and colonial cultural and political identities sets the stage for a fascinating and often fraught search definition of this musical heritage.  

We were delighted to both support the award, and the RPS more widely, but also to attend in the awards, in which the ‘vibrant and vital impact’ of classical music across the UK were manifested and celebrated in these awards.

Click here to read more about the RPS Awards.

Photo: Greg Milner.