Marlborough Concert Orchestra

02/11/2024

For all those interested in music education. Deadline for input is 22nd November

Help shape the future of music education! The Department for Education is reviewing England's curriculum, and now's your chance to make your voice heard. Whether you're a teacher, parent, or passionate about music, share your thoughts in the survey. Together, we can ensure music has a central place in education!

Learn more and contribute here: https://www.makingmusic.org.uk/news/full-review-of-music-education-curriculum-england

30/10/2024

Another opportunity to hear classical music in Marlborough. This time it's solo pinao at St Peter's Marlborough. Looks like it will be a great concert.

This Sunday Ingmar Lazar returns to St Peter’s! Tickets on sale and more information via our website.

https://stpetersmarlborough.org.uk/event/brilliant-international-musicians-series-ingmar-lazar-solo-piano

Sunday 3rd November, 19:00.

30/10/2024

In 20 months, 20 years will have passed since our inaugural concert! The committee are busy hatching some exciting and ambitious plans for our 20th season including new works and some big classics. In order to bring some of these plans to fruition, we are looking for more grade 7+ string players to join for regular rehearsals on Tuesday evenings in Marlborough. If this might be you, please get in touch.

25/10/2024

Rehearsals for this have been going well. Definitely a date for your diaries if it isn't already in there!

28/09/2024

Are there any clarinetists out there who are free to rehearse on Tuesday evenings in Marlborough and would love to play 2nd clarinet (Bb/A/Eb) in Mahler 4 for our concert on 7 December? Although someone who can play Eb would be preferred, if you could make most Tuesday evenings and would be keen to play then we might have someone who could fill in the Eb bits on the day. The part is available on imslp if you wanted to have a look. Drop us a message if you are interested.

15/09/2024

We were very lucky to have one of our long standing supporters Jon Farkas-Blake take some lovely photos of our summer concert. The images include photos of the whole orchestra outside St. Mary's Church and feature our wonderful young soloist Astrid Wilson-Gignoux, who gave a truly splendid performance of the lark ascending. The full album can be seen at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.913340174166005&type=3

15/09/2024

26/08/2024

We hope all our members and followers are having a lovely summer. We are looking forward to getting back to rehearsals in a couple of weeks but in the meantime here's a throwback to BBC Points West in July to remind us why we all enjoy our Tuesday evenings so much.

06/07/2024

Rehearsal is underway for tonight’s concert. Full sound from the winds, and a beautiful lark warming up for this evening.
Tickets available on the door but turn up early to get a good seat!

06/07/2024

If you missed our appearance on BBC Points West earlier this week, you can read about us at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2gl54r748o and come to hear our concert live tonight - works by Elgar, Holst and Vaughn Williams - 7:30 St. Mary's Church Marlborough.

Tickets: Adults £15 / Students £5 / Under 18s free. Available online via https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/marlborough-concert-orchestra or purchase at Sound Knowledge, Hughenden Yard or on the door (cash or card).

Amateur musicians say the Marlborough Concert Orchestra is a "lifeline".

05/07/2024

To conclude our summer concert this Saturday we will be performing Vaughn Williams’ Pastoral Symphony. This piece is not based on the English Countryside as you might expect, but instead evokes the fields of France during World War I, where the composer served as an ambulance orderly in the Royal Army Medical Corps. As Vaughn Williams explained in a letter to Ursula Wood (his second wife) “It’s really war-time music – a great deal of it incubated when I used to go up night after night with the ambulance waggon at Ecoives, and we went up a steep hill and there was a wonderful Corot-like landscape in the sunset…” We hope you will come to our summer concert to experience this beautifully evocative piece.

Tickets: Adults £15 / Students £5 / Under 18s free. Available online via https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/marlborough-concert-orchestra or purchase at Sound Knowledge, Hughenden Yard or on the door (cash or card).

03/07/2024

Something very exciting happened last week. BBC Points West came to film us rehearsing for our upcoming concert this Saturday and we featured on the news this evening! Available on iplayer until 6:58pm tomorrow - our section starts 22:06 in https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0020tsd/points-west-evening-news-03072024?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2uF3I77AkBGHyddiVxxEgu6pSlUuBtKU1tORrwaN1WCQEtgHScdWMWzwo_aem_HBtrc9CtabNE1qjZI27Dyw

The latest news, sport, weather and features from the West of England.

30/06/2024

We are very lucky to have so many talented musicians within the orchestra and no more so than with our solo violinist for the Lark Ascending, Astrid Wilson-Gignoux. Astrid goes to St Bart's school in Newbury where she is studying Mathamathics, English Literature and History A-levels. She is also self-studying Latin A-level.

Astrid studies violin with Daphne Moody and has played with MCO for two years. Part of a team of 5 others who recently completed the Ten Tors 45 mile challenge, she also plays in a band called The Tarantellas. Astrid is undertaking a sponsored walk in late July, raising money for the Tall Ships Youth Trust (a youth development sailing charity with three 72ft yachts which they use to teach disadvantaged young people to sail on). If you would like to support Astrid's fundraising activity for this worthwhile cause, donations can be made via https://www.justgiving.com/page/astrid-wilson-gignoux-1718781375958?utm_medium=fundraising&utm_content=page%2Fastrid-wilson-gignoux-1718781375958&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=pfp-share

Tickets: Adults £15 / Students £5 / Under 18s free. Available online via https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/marlborough-concert-orchestra or purchase at Sound Knowledge, Hughenden Yard or on the door (cash or card).

26/06/2024

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.

Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

These lines are 12 of the 122-lines from George Meredith's poem about the song of the skylark, also titled The Lark Ascending which Vaughan Williams noted at the top of his score for his piece with the same title. A perennial favourite in the Classic FM Hall of Fame, this piece features in our summer concert performed by our amazing young violinist Astrid Wilson-Gignoux (more about her in our next post!).

Tickets: Adults £15 / Students £5 / Under 18s free. Available online via https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/marlborough-concert-orchestra or purchase at Sound Knowledge, Hughenden Yard or on the door (cash or card).

22/06/2024

If people were asked to name their favourite English composers, Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams might feature in a lot of answers. It is therefore fitting that our summer concert includes works from all three of these composers.

Gustav Holst’s First Suite in Eb for Military Band convinced several other composers that serious music could be written specifically for this combination of wind, brass and percussion. With thanks to our extras playing instruments you might not have seen at an MCO concert before, including 3 different types of saxophone, our summer concert on 6th July is not to be missed.

Tickets: Adults £15 / Students £5 / Under 18s free. Available online via https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/marlborough-concert-orchestra or purchase at Sound Knowledge, Hughenden Yard or on the door (cash or card).

Buy tickets for Marlborough Concert Orchestra's upcoming events. Click the link for further information and to secure your tickets now!

09/06/2024

If you are a fan of Elgar’s Enigma Variations and would like to hear a piece which the composer was understood to prefer, come along to our summer concert on July 6th to hear his Serenade for Strings.

Published in 1893, Elgar’s Serenade for Strings was the first of his compositions with which he professed himself happy. It is the earliest work by Elgar to have become well known – it preceded his ‘Enigma’ Variations by six years – but it is utterly characteristic. Perhaps influenced by Elgar being an accomplished violinist, later in life he singled the Serenade out as his favourite work and described it as ‘really stringy in effect’. It will sound even better in the acoustics of St. Mary’s Church.

Tickets: Adults £15 / Students £5 / Under 18s free. Available online via https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/marlborough-concert-orchestra or purchase at Sound Knowledge, Hughenden Yard or on the door (cash or card).

27/03/2024

Huge huge congratulations to our four wind soloists from Saturday's concert. They absolutely nailed their performance!

Melanie Buckley Nicki Kinton Rachel Burbidge and Fiona Ruby played Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with us and it was a thing of great beauty.

26/03/2024

We are continuing to bask in the glow of our wonderful concert on Saturday night. Here are a few more photos of the orchestra - it's almost as good as being there, isn't it?!

Tomorrow will be all about the soloists.

25/03/2024

As promised, here are some photos from Saturday. There were far too many to put in one post so here's some from the all important rehearsal in the afternoon.

We hope you like them!