This morning I found myself engaged in an unusual Sunday morning activity (although less so in this house) crawling around on my hands and knees rummaging through the bottom shelf of the book cases in a long-neglected section: my beloved LP collection. Whilst the cassette tapes and CDs have long since been confined to the [...]
Kurt Sanderling and Rachmaninov: from...
This morning I found myself engaged in an unusual Sunday morning activity (although less so in this house) crawling around on my hands and knees rummaging through the bottom shelf of the book cases in a long-neglected section: my beloved LP collection. Whilst the cassette tapes and CDs have long since been confined to the [...]
We Make History Every Time We Play: 2...
Building our history through our archives The orchestra has now reached its 21st anniversary year, our archivist Richard Wiltshire reflects on how the LGSO’s archive has been formed, features highlights in the collection and plans for the future to make the items available to researchers. I’m a professionally-trained archivist. Over the past 14 years I [...]
Love and (iii) Romanza
It was my childhood parish priest, a kind man with an acerbic wit by the name Robert Ivan Jones who once recounted meeting the aging Ralph Vaughan Williams when the composer visited Hereford Cathedral. Robert’s enduring memory was of RVW being offered the hallowed “Bishop’s Chair”, normally strictly reserved for the incumbent primate. This was [...]
LGSO On Tour
This year marks our 20th anniversary, and there’s a number of ways we’re going to celebrate this milestone. One I’m particularly excited about is our tour to Cologne at the end of the month. The last time the orchestra played outside of the UK was our December 2008 concert in Paris, where we did a joint [...]
Concerto auditions
We are now taking applications for our annual concerto auditions in order to fill two performance opportunities in our 2016/17 Season. In order to apply please complete our application form. Auditions will take place on Saturday 30th April; applications close on 10th April and and you will be notified via email by 16th April if [...]
Bruises on the chin – a necessa...
My name is Jimmy and I play sectional viola with the London Gay Symphony – certainly in my opinion a greater and frankly superior instrument than the dainty violin. Ahem. You can keep your viola jokes however on occasion, especially after the longer rehearsals, I do question why as I’m left with a particularly cruel [...]