Exeter Children's Orchestra

ECO’s 2010-2011 season began in early September with the usual informal performance at Crealy in which we repeated much of the repertoire we had played at the end of the summer term.  We then started work on the new music for our Autumn Concert in November at the Mint Methodist Church.  This is quite one of my favourite venues: a large modern building with a very helpful acoustic and a light, airy atmosphere, and our musicians really did themselves credit in a programme ranging from Beethoven to Michael Jackson.  A highlight of the evening was a reworked windband composition by Bob Lowden called A New Orleans Jam Session in which the orchestra accompanied a jazz quartet: Kayleigh Gerrard (clarinet), Alex Wesson (trumpet), Leo Kirby (trombone) and Jack Reed (tuba) – all of whom have now left ECO.  Our trumpeters featured in Leroy Anderson’s gorgeous arrangement of the Song of Jupiter from Handel’s opera Semele, and the audience very much enjoyed Bob Cerulli’s Scenes from the Old West, an evocation of cowboy movies and the wide open spaces of the Wild West.  Ellie Partridge and Anna Clarke played a duet for flute and piano, one of the best solo-spots I can remember, and Georgie Allen (at my request) sang the unaccompanied folksong O Waly Waly with which she had so moved our audiences in Russia three months earlier.  The Chamber Orchestra performed the Castillane from Massenet’s ballet-music for Le Cid.  A very incomplete set of parts for this long-out-of-print arrangement had been sitting on my shelves for about 25 years, ever since the music publishers Belwin Mills had let me raid their stock when they closed down their London branch.  But I managed to track down a score belonging to a school in America, and from the copy they sent me I was able to reconstruct the full orchestration – it was great to be able to perform it after all that time.

Next came our Christmas concert for which, as usual, we had a very tight rehearsal schedule.  But we managed to get a completely different programme ready in time, and it was a successful and enjoyable evening, despite some absences caused by the very treacherous icy conditions.  Two of the new pieces that were particularly well received were a suite of music from the film The Polar Express and Leon Jessel’s Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, a title you may not recognise, but you’d know the tune if you heard it.  We also played an excellent new composition by Carol Johnson called Three King Strut which was a great favourite with the orchestra.  The Chamber Orchestra gave a creditable performance of a very challenging arrangement by Bruce Chase called Christmas Favourites.  In the middle of each half of the concert we were entertained by Exeter Wind Group, an ensemble run by ECO’s flute tutor Laura Hutchings, and they performed medleys of seasonal favourites such as All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth, Jingle Bell Rock and Frosty the Snowman. 

The night after our Christmas Concert the snow fell.  I live at the end of long narrow lane, and I woke to find my car almost submerged and the lane knee-deep in snow – and that evening EYO was due to play for Broadclyst Parish Carol Service!  We had put a lot of work into preparing for this, I myself in arranging the carols for the orchestra, and the players in rehearsing them, so although I would normally be childishly thrilled-to-bits by a heavy snowfall, this was not the day for it.  All the roads were dangerously icy and no public transport was running, but we didn’t want to let the parish down so Sarah e-mailed our players to say that we still hoped to be able to put together a scratch orchestra, and anyone who could safely travel would be very welcome.  In the event we did manage to get a few players there to provide some music before and after the service and accompany the carols; it wasn't quite the standard I had hoped for but at least we were able to meet our commitment and that was very much appreciated by the Rector and his depleted congregation.  The best-laid schemes.... 

To help in our preparation for the Easter Concert we had another of our tutoring sessions with two Principals from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in late February, generously funded by Exeter City Council.  In these straightened times the Council wasn’t able to pay for as many of them to visit us as in previous years, but we were very grateful to get anything at all when so many other grants were being cut back.  Andy Cresci, the BSO’s charismatic tuba player came and put our brass group through its paces again – he is absolutely brilliant with them and they have always got so much out of his visits.  And our clarinets and saxophones were tutored by Kevin Banks, the BSO’s superb Principal clarinettist, who has also come to us before, and who had a very productive session with our young players (they normally have to put up with me for their sectional rehearsals).  We also invited Fiona McLean to come and take our strings on the same day.  Fiona is Director of the Devon Camerata and of a very imaginative music project called Joined-Up Thinking, and her rehearsals are not only instructive but also great fun for the musicians.  We worked on two of that term’s new pieces: Elliot Del Borgo’s Aboriginal Rituals (quite challenging for our strings) and a suite of John Williams’s music for the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  After the sectional sessions Andy and Kevin sat among the players and helped them in the full orchestra rehearsal and that of the chamber orchestra.  Our relationship with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra came about after Antonia Maks (past ECO Chair) succeeded in enlisting Marin Alsop (the BSO’s last principal conductor) to become a Patron of ECO alongside our other longstanding Patron Sir Colin Davis.  The visits we have had from (sometimes as many as six) BSO musicians have always been of enormous value to our players, and we want them to continue in the future, even though the Council has now withdrawn its grant completely and public subsidy will no longer be available.  We have looked into the cost of funding them ourselves, and this has revealed just how much the Council has been paying on our behalf – we really are very grateful for the sponsorship they were able to give us in better times.  But with a fund-raising effort and the use of a small amount of ECO’s reserves we will be able to continue these sessions in the future, so I’m very pleased to be able to say that we hope to arrange another visit by BSO players next term.

For our Easter Concert we were back in the Mint Methodist Church, and again we presented a widely varied programme, including music by Lully and Mozart alongside Elmer Bernstein’s music from The Great Escape and novelties such as Sandy Feldstein’s Pizzicato Rock and James Ployhar’s Clarinet Rag.  The pieces we had worked on with the BSO players and Fiona McLean were excellently played, especially Aboriginal Rituals in which the rapid string semiquaver patterns sounded terrific!  The Chamber Orchestra gave a very beautiful rendition of the slow second movement of Schubert’s 5th Symphony, and there were solos by Anna Clarke and Alex Wesson (his swansong with ECO).  We ended the concert with a rousing performance of Rock Around the Clock.

Exeter Children’s Orchestra is affiliated to an organisation called Making Music which, for the past 75 years, has supported and championed amateur music-making in the UK, and it was through Making Music that we were offered the opportunity to make a recording for the BBC as part of Radio 3’s festival of light music “Light Fantastic” in June.  Rather than try to compete with other bands and orchestras in performing standard repertoire we chose to apply to record my Exeter City March, the idea being that something unique to ECO might stand a better chance of being selected – and so it proved.  Out of “a flood of applications” 27 groups were selected for recording sessions with BBC sound engineers and producers, and we were one of them!  On 5th June our players (augmented by some of the recent leavers) gathered at Exeter University’s new music studio at Kay House, looking anxiously at the huge BBC Outside Broadcasts van parked by the entrance, and we delivered ourselves into the very professional hands of the production team.  I had been asked to provide a detailed seating plan in advance, and when we looked in the hall we found that everything had been set up ready for us, with the microphones positioned, the red light flashing, all set to go.  There followed lots of careful sound checks and adjustments, and then we recorded a number of takes, interspersed with helpful and encouraging suggestions from the producer and the sound engineer.  It was a great experience for all of us, and after my initial terror had worn off I found I enjoyed it as much as everyone else did.  Of course after that there was no guarantee that our performance would be broadcast, but to our delight it was, in the interval of a peak-time evening concert on Radio 3.  To be absolutely honest, I can’t say I was altogether satisfied with the balance of the recording that was broadcast: the sound seemed quite compressed (ironing out dynamic contrast) and the percussion was recorded rather too prominently, but hey! – we can’t really complain can we! 

One of ECO’s regular engagements over many years has been a performance outside the Cathedral as part of the city’s Lammas Fair, and I have photos at home of past generations of our players in front of the dramatic backdrop of the mediaeval image screen, with my Golden Retriever Gina lying patiently beside favoured cellists, and before her (10 years ago and more) my last Retriever Bess.  The successive generations of musicians remain young, so the dog and I are the only ones who show the passage of years!  “Loaf Mass” should actually be a harvest celebration on 1st August, but in Exeter it seems to be a very movable feast.  Until recently it was held in late May or early June, but now it has been moved to early July, a date which suits us less well because it comes on top of our other regular commitments at that time.  However we continue to keep this engagement because it is a very good “shop window” on ECO where we are seen and heard by a great many members of the public visiting the popular craft market on the Cathedral green.  Since this year’s Lammas Fair I have been approached by quite a few people who have told me how much they enjoyed the orchestra’s performance.

In order to fit the Saturday Lammas Fair into our schedule, our Summer Concert at the Corn Exchange was staged on the following evening, and as that was a Sunday, with school the next morning, the early time of 6 o’clock was chosen.  In retrospect this does seem to have been a mistake because the seating in the hall was only half full – I think we have to take the lesson from this that people don’t really want to turn out at 6 o’clock on a Sunday.  Also I think it might have helped if we could have had some of the tickets to sell ourselves, and if we could have publicised the concert much better ourselves, rather than just relying on the Corn Exchange ticket office and publicity.  As for the performance, I can’t pretend that it was the best of the year, but bearing in mind the Corn Exchange’s acoustics (much less helpful than at the Mint), our depleted brass section and the discouragingly small audience, it was perhaps as good as we could reasonably have expected.  The pieces which worked the best in this concert were The Dance of the Hours from Ponchielli’s La Gioconda and Magic Works from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; also Jack Bullock’s arrangement of a sequence of songs about rain (Singin’ in the Rain etc.) was very well-received by the audience.  And I have to say that the Chamber Orchestra’s performance of the 3rd movement of Schubert’s 5th Symphony (we are giving you this symphony in instalments!) was very good indeed – I might even say superb!  Accurately played, with beautiful phrasing, especially from the clarinets – I was really delighted with it.  Kayleigh Gerrard and Vit Delve played an enjoyable clarinet duet, and Bethany Partridge, as her valedictory solo, gave us a wonderful performance of unaccompanied cello music by Bach.  More about Bethany later....

The following Saturday we ended the term in the traditional way with a daytime performance in the huge bandstand in Sidmouth’s Connaught Gardens.  As usual we reserved a sunny day for this concert (in 25 years or so it has hardly ever been rained-off) and we entertained a fair-sized audience of ECO families, holidaymakers and Sidmouth residents with a programme of light music from our recent repertoire.  Afterwards some of the players and their families went down to the beach under Jacob’s Ladder for a picnic of hot pasties and delicious cream cakes.         

One of Rowena Brown’s best ideas when she was ECO Chair was to have an Open Day as a way of recruiting new players.  The first of these was such a success that we organised another one last October, also successful but not quite as well-attended.  It’s hard to know when the best time to hold the Open Day is; we have now tried spring and early autumn, and this year we have arranged it for the first rehearsal of the Christmas music on the Saturday after ECO’s November concert.  Members of the committee have been hard at work writing to schools and music teachers to make sure as many people get to hear about it as possible, so we hope to see lots of new faces coming to try our orchestra out to see if it suits them – wouldn’t it be great if a tuba-player came! 

Another of Rowena’s good ideas was to hire a professional percussion tutor following some difficulties with that section, and Steve Douglas has now been coming to our Saturday rehearsals for nearly three years.  As a result our percussion sessions are now very well run, and Steve’s expertise and technical know-how have been of the greatest value to the young players.  It was Steve who lent us his glockenspiel to encourage some of them to have a go at playing parts we had previously either ignored or adapted for the synthesizer, and they took to it so well that we decided to raise the money this year to buy a glockenspiel of our own.  Now we are looking into buying a xylophone too.  There are eight enthusiastic percussionists in the section, all keen to participate, so I often have write extra percussion parts into our music to give everybody something to do.  

Steve and I are the only people at ECO who get paid for our work.  The other section tutors are all volunteers, and the orchestra really wouldn’t be able to succeed without their generous dedication to our young musicians.  Laura Hutchings, Helen Patterson and Robert Willis are past members of the orchestra (quite long-past if they’ll forgive me for saying so!) and for many years they have given up their Saturday mornings to tutor, respectively, our flutes, upper strings and brass.  Bethany Partridge was our Principal cellist until the beginning of this term, and she has also been taking that section’s rehearsals with remarkable results.  Beth has now left to take up a choral scholarship at Trinity College Cambridge, and we wish her well and thank her for her outstanding contribution to our orchestra.  Mark Everton is Leader of the orchestra, and in the past year he has also been tutoring our 3rd violins.  To allow inexperienced violinists to join in our performances I write an easy 3rd violin part into each new piece of music I give out, and it is very useful indeed to have someone to rehearse them separately, so I am extremely grateful to Mark for taking this on in addition to his duties as a very effective and successful Leader.  Unfortunately one name has to be missing from this paragraph: Christine Haywood is ECO’s longest-serving tutor, and she has been rehearsing our recorder-players for more years than I can remember.  But nowadays children tend not to start on the recorder as they used to, so for the past year we have had no recorder-players.  Let’s hope that the Open Day may bring some new ones – we are all missing Christine!  

We have now started work on the music for our concerts in November.  EYO will be giving a lunchtime concert in the Cathedral Chapter House on Saturday 12th and ECO’s Autumn Concert will be the following Saturday evening at the Mint Methodist Church.  One of the most unusual of the new pieces we are preparing is a Japanese-inspired composition called The Land of the Rising Sun (not the one with the same title that we performed a few years ago).  In the introduction a solo flautist has to imitate the sound of the Shakuhachi (the Japanese lacquered bamboo flute) and then the people who play the seven percussion parts pound out a rhythm in imitation of Taiko drummers – it’s a great piece!  There’s also another of James Ployhar’s excellent windband compositions (that I have adapted for orchestra) featuring a particular section – you may remember that we have played those for the trombones, the clarinets and the percussion; this one is called Flight of the Flutes.  We are also rehearsing a delightful suite of Italian folksongs, some more film music, and the exciting prelude to Bizet’s opera Carmen – and lots more.  We will be sharing our Christmas Concert at the Corn Exchange with the Ockment Valley Ringers, the superb handbell team directed by our brass tutor Rob Willis, and next term we will share a concert in the Cathedral with the Devon County Junior Choir, and one in the Corn Exchange with our visiting musicians from Russia.  So there’s a lot to look forward to, and I do hope the families and friends of our players will support our efforts by filling all the seats at our concerts.  Those of you who perform in public will know what a buzz it gives to a concert if there is a large, enthusiastic audience, and how discouraging it is if there isn’t.

Finally a word of thanks to the amazing Sarah Clarke and her very hard-working committee.  You might think it superfluous for me to thank them because the Queen has done so already, but Her Majesty doesn’t see just how much time they all have to put in, most of them fitting their commitment around their jobs and families.  Sarah, for example, has a full time (and very demanding) teaching job, a husband who runs a business, and three ultra-intelligent children, each of them involved in all sorts of activities which require the parental taxi-service (her son sings in the Cathedral choir).  With all this and more Sarah somehow finds time to maintain ECO’s website as well as being the organising force behind the committee.  I know a little bit of what’s involved just from the e-mails I get from her every few days, some of them typed at 1 o’clock or 6 o’clock in the morning – does she ever sleep?  I am left open-mouthed with admiration for the energy and commitment that Sarah and all her colleagues on the committee devote to their work for ECO.  So a huge thank-you.  Thank-you to Sarah and the team on behalf of all our young musicians who benefit from their efforts – and I’m sure I speak for Her Majesty too!