Following last week's concert this week's rehearsal was a fairly relaxed affair. We used the new drum tuner I purchased for the Orchestra to overhaul the timpani and bring them back into a nice sounding set. Thanks to Steve Douglas our percussion tutor for providing a master-class in timpani servicing. I handed out several new pieces including The Great Escape - 2019 is the 75th Anniversary of the actual great escape. Guardians of the Galaxy proved challenging though credit m

Last night we held our Spring Concert in St. Thomas Methodist Church, Exeter to a packed audience. The young people worked very hard and we produces some spectacular music. Thank you to our amazing committee and volunteer parents for organising the concert, tickets, programmes and refreshments.

A good, relaxed rehearsal today spending some time sorting out those tricky bars in Joseph and The Greatest Showman. The young people played beautifully and we are all looking forward to next week's concert in St Thomas Methodist Church. Towards the end we were joined by the ECO Junior Orchestra - all sixteen of them - and they performed Biscuit Club Boogie and then joined us in In The Hall of The Mountain King, allowing us to go rather fast at the end and even keeping up. Sp

A lovely concert in our favourite church: St Michael, The Archangel, in Teignmouth. EYO played once again this year as part of the Teignmouth Classical Musical Festival to an almost packed church of families and friends. For a few it was their first EYO concert and with the orchestra so much smaller than ECO there is nowhere to hide! With two solos and a clarinet rag trio - accompanied by the whole orchestra we delivered a veriety of music for all tastes. We even played the f

So my Grade 6 Baritone Horn player has kindly agreed two weeks before our spring concert to switch to Trumpet as we are in need of confident brass. Go Ned! What a star. CHANGE #1 We had a great rehearsal despite the best efforts of the roadworks and diversions on Exe Bridges meaning some players were still drifting in half an hour into rehearsal. CHANGE #2 We are felling confident and relaxed leading towards Easter and my fears from last week were laid to rest (perhaps tempo

Love 'em, love 'em, love 'em. Even if it was me who volunteered them! Although we are back in term time we were missing a few key players today through university interviews, sports competitions, Ten Tors, Duke of Edinburgh and, of course, the ubiquitous lurgy. Molly, our orchestra leader was persuaded to volunteer to play timpani in Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001 : A Space Odyssey) - she seemed to quite enjoy it. Sammi, a past member was back from university and she was quic