Technicolor Triumph

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. Spurred on with newfound confidence the Juniors sightread Jurassic Park and will play that with us next week too.

The first official performance of the Junior Orchestra will be in our summer concert where they will play two solos of their own under the direction of Helan Patterson.

EYO in Teignmouth

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 first piece again after the audience didn't do what we expected and had to have some "coaching". (they were too well behaved)

Our last piece, Lord of the Dance, saw each section standing up as we played until the whole orchestra was on its feet. A great ending to a great concert.

Thanks also go to a trio of our past members who came to help swell the sound and also to our woodwind tutor, Laura for playing sax and accompanying our oboe soloist.

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Note: It turns out you should't transport portable timpani upside down with the tension peddle totally slack. Cue six of us doing our best countryside vet impressions trying to reconnect a handful of rods inside to the the spindles! A lot of inspired use of teaspoons as levers and then a whole lot of re-tuning and we had a functional set again and only a little late starting the rehearsal.

All Change Please!

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 temporarily) so much I offered them an extra piece in the concert. CHANGE #3

It can sometimes seem an uphill struggle getting volunteers for solos for concerts but this term have had some very eager volunteers from young players who clearly have not yet learned how to be self conscious and nervous. I've watched facebook videos of one of them playing from memory and talk about nerves of steel! It's going to be a lovely concert on the 23rd. A quick swap of soloists was required today when one of them realised she couldn't actually make the concert in which she was supposed to play her solo. CHANGE #4

Tomorrow's concert in Teignmouth is looking good now too with a (relieved) drop of Toccata - I really must see if I can get the Sky version I used to play in City of Plymouth Concert Band. And we have replaced it with Memory from Cats. Only handed out this week but they played it beautifully. CHANGE #5

The orchestra have their new black folders with the Orchestra logo on. Plenty of space to write their names on too with a sharpie. They all seemed very excited with them. CHANGE #6

Finally as we were packing up two young flautists asked if I could help them hire bassoons from Devon Music. They'd been playing school ones and wanted to play bassoon in ECO. I readily agreed and am looking forward to having 2 bassoonists. CHANGE #7

Finally, this evening, I am printing the programme inserts for tomorrow's concert because sometimes it's easier to do this kind of think at the last minute - NO CHANGE THERE !!!