Former BBC executive Anita Bhalla has been appointed chair of Performances Birmingham (PBL), the charity that runs Town Hall and Symphony Hall Birmingham.
She succeeds Roger Burman who has been in the post since 1991.
He leaves the charity in a stable financial position, with record audiences in the past year, and a thriving programme that takes music into communities across the city.
Ms Bhalla has been a trustee of the charity since 1996, and until recently worked for the BBC in a variety of roles, including overseeing the national network of Big Screens that show live relays of major cultural and sporting events, and founding the BBC Asian Network. She also also served iun a variety of executive roles for various local bodies.
She said: “I am particularly keen to forge even stronger relationships with our artistic partners – including our resident ensembles and artists, such as the CBSO – to ensure that PBL presents a wide and diverse programme of events which reflects the demographics of our great city.”
She continued: “I would like to pay tribute to Roger Burman for his sterling work over the past two decades.”
Mr Burman said: “It has been a privilege to serve Birmingham as chairman of one of the UK’s leading music organisations over the past 22 years. We are very proud of the wide range of musicians, orchestras, singers and bands we have brought to the city, the many partners with which we work across Birmingham, the musicians whose careers we have nurtured and the achievements of the tens of thousands of young people involved in our music education and community activities. Town Hall and Symphony Hall are at the heart of the city’s cultural life, as well as offering significant economic benefits, and I am proud to have been a part of Birmingham’s cultural renaissance over the last two decades.”
Ms Bhalla takes up the PBL post in February.
