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Of the five orchestras maintained by the British Broadcasting Company, the BBC Concert Orchestra is the most oriented toward light music, popular music, and jazz. The orchestra's name is somewhat inaccurate: although it does often perform live concerts, the group's most important tasks are connected to radio broadcasting.

The BBC Concert Orchestra grew out of the BBC Theatre Orchestra, which was formed in 1931 and was later renamed the BBC Opera Orchestra. In 1952, that group was reorganized as the BBC Concert Orchestra. The following year, it became the house orchestra for the BBC program Friday Night is Music Night, which, as of the late 2010s, remained on the air as the world's longest-running radio program. The orchestra performed a variety of other light music on BBC programs, accompanied popular singers, sometimes teamed with the BBC Big Band, and at times performed operatic and symphonic works. For two decades, the group gave live concerts at London's Camden Theatre, moving to the Hippodrome in North London in 1972. The orchestra's first conductor was Gilbert Vinter. Subsequent conductors have included Charles Mackerras (1954-1956), Vilem Tausky (1956-1966), Marcus Dods (1966-1970), Ashley Lawrence (1970-1989), Barry Wordsworth (1989-2006), Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart (2010-2017, remaining as the principal guest conductor), Bramwell Tovey (2018-2022) and Anna-Maria Helsing (2023-). Early digital recordings of the group include four volumes of "Golden Cinema Classics," released on the Bainbridge Classics label in 1992.

Composers associated with the BBC Concert Orchestra have sometimes been associated with popular music spheres; they include Radiohead guitarist and keyboardist Jonny Greenwood, who became the orchestra's composer-in-association in 2004. The orchestra's other responsibilities have included recording jingles for BBC News programs. The BBC Concert Orchestra has a large catalog of recordings, many of them covering British light music, film music, and symphonic music that has not been recorded elsewhere. Many of their recordings have appeared on the Dutton Laboratories (which has issued a lengthy series of light music/easy listening recordings), Chandos, and Somm labels, among others. In 2019, the orchestra issued an album on Regent of music by its new composer-in-residence, Dobrinka Tabakova. Recent recordings have seen the orchestra moving further into serious repertory. In 2020, the group released a recording of Herbert Howells' Missa Sabrinensis on the Hyperion label and another of Britten's Saint Nicolas and A Ceremony of Carols on Signum Classics. By 2024, when the BBC Concert Orchestra released the album Dorothy Howell: Orchestral Works on Signum Classics, its recording catalog comprised at least 90 items. ~ James Manheim

Alice Farnham is one of Britain's leading female conductors. She has a long résumé of appearances as a guest conductor with leading opera companies and orchestras, and she has served as artistic director for productions at the Welsh National Youth Opera. Farnham has devised programs designed to encourage women in the conducting profession, and she is the author of a book about the training of modern conductors. In 2024, Farnham made her debut on the NMC label with the album Imogen Holst: Discovering Imogen.

Farnham was born in Cromer in England's Norfolk region in the early 1970s; a 2023 article in London's Daily Mail gave her age as 52. Both her parents were interested in music; her father was a clergyman who played flute and guitar. Farnham took up the trumpet at age nine and piano at 11. She began her career as a keyboardist, earning an organ scholarship at St. Hugh's College at Oxford University. She held an organ fellowship at St. Thomas' Church on Fifth Avenue in New York. Switching to conducting, she moved to Russia for studies with Ilya Musin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Back in England, Farnham began a two-decade career as a regular guest conductor at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London.

She has also made guest conducting appearances with opera companies and orchestras all over Britain, Europe, and North America, including the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the Malmö Opera in Sweden, the Calgary Opera in Canada, and the BBC Concert Orchestra. With the latter group, Farnham made her recording debut in 2024, releasing the album Imogen Holst: Discovering Imogen on the NMC label. Farnham is especially noted for her educational activities. She has led some 500 workshops for women conductors and has served as co-founder and artistic director of the Royal Philharmonic Society's Women Conductors program and of a similar Female Conductor Program at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Ireland. Farnham is the author of In Good Hands: The Making of a Modern Conductor, published in Britain by Faber & Faber in 2023. ~ James Manheim