Orchestra History
| A History of the Redditch Orchestra |
The Redditch Orchestra must be one of Worcestershire's oldest
amateur orchestras. Jimmy Price who had recently been appointed by the
County to teach violin in schools established it in 1948. Jimmy had
been a professional violinist working in leading orchestras and playing
under many great conductors including Beecham in the RPO. Jimmy
gathered a group of keen amateur musicians from his travels into school
and formed the Redditch College Orchestra, named because it rehearsed
at the college and eventually became an adult evening class. The
Orchestra performed three concerts each year at the college and in
other venues in the Redditch area. In February 1981 Jimmy had a sudden
illness and John Graham principal cellist and conductor of the R
edditch Youth Orchestra (also started by Jimmy Price in 1950) took over
the baton. In 1985 the Orchestra left the college and became
self-financing and also changed its name to The Redditch Orchestra. The
Orchestra has had two other conductors, Nic Fallowfield and Mike Bates,
but is now being conducted by John Graham along with guest conductors
being asked to conduct specific concerts.
The Orchestra
is made up of 35 members and it is enlarged for concerts to 40-50
players depending on the programme. Concerts are usually held in St
Stephen's Church in Redditch or The Kingsley College (previously the
Leys High School), but the Orchestra does do repeat performances of
concerts in other venues and these have been in Pershore, Worcester,
Alcester and Birmingham. The Orchestra has on occasions combined with
choral societies to accompany some of the great choral masterpieces,
has made two concert tours to France, one to Belgium and one to Germany.
The
Orchestra repertoire is varied, but mainly comes from the classical,
romantic and early twentieth century. The programmes are designed to be
interesting and a challenge for players to rehearse, to attract an
audience and to be financially viable in terms of music hire, copyright
and soloist's fees. Soloist's playing with the Orchestra have included,
Alan Schiller, Frank Wibaut, Elaine Donohoe, Anup Biswas, Martin
Millner and Tom Bowes performing standard concertos plus challenging
works such as the Barber and Szymanowski violin concertos.
The
Redditch Orchestra is facing the new millennium and its next fifty
years in good spirit but with the ever perennial challenges of
attracting new players, coping with concert programmes and venues in
Redditch (which are far from ideal), and improving audience size.