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Forthcoming concert: |
28th June 2008 - Beethoven: 4th Piano Concerto, Sibelius: 3rd Symphony, Mozart: Overture, The Magic Flute | ||||||||||||||
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What is the Tudor Orchestra? |
The Tudor Orchestra is a friendly community orchestra based in North Finchley, Barnet, London. It is the principal activity of Tudor Orchestra Ltd (Company number 5880790) which is a registered charity (charity number 1116684). The core object is education and advancement of the arts. The principal means of achieving this are organising rehearsals and concerts which has educational benefits for the participants and public audiences as well as keeping orchestral music alive in the community generally. A balance is kept between the benefits to individual participants, to the orchestra as a whole, and public benefit. The educational benefits to individuals will best be met in a friendly supportive environment where players can expect to keep their position long term and commit accordingly. Ideally the orchestra is open to all, but doubling of parts or a weak player can be musically bad for the orchestra as a whole and unhelpful for individual players and spoil concerts. Players also need a reasonable level of ability to get real benefit from participating. Subject to that the orchestra would like to welcome, and is likely to adapt its repertoire to suit, all that wish to play. | ||||||||||||||
| Where is it? | It rehearses in Trinity Church, Nether Street, London N12 7NN, close to Tally Ho bus station (spider map for 82, 125, 134, 221, 263, 383, 460), and five minutes walk from Woodside Park or West Finchley stations on the underground Northern Line High Barnet branch). | ||||||||||||||
| When does it meet? | Rehearsals are on Monday nights at 7.45pm, with breaks over Christmas, Easter, and summer holidays. There are normally three concerts a year, in March/April, July and December. | ||||||||||||||
| Why is it called Tudor? | The name relates to the old Tudor (883) telephone exchange where the orchestra was originally based and not to the type of music performed! Our repertoire ranges from the eighteenth century to the present day. | ||||||||||||||
| What does it play? |
We generally play more adventurous and unusual repertoire pieces than a typical community orchestra.
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| Who can play? | We aim to give anyone who has commitment and basic abilities the opportunity to participate and play. Some compromise and reasonable limits are needed to ensure effective rehearsals and worthwhile concerts but anyone with reasonable competence and music reading ability will be welcomed at rehearsals and concerts. If you feel that you can read and play well enough to contribute to the orchestra please sit in on a rehearsal and see how well it works. There is no formal audition process. | ||||||||||||||
| What vacancies are there? | We can normally give an immediate welcome to string players - particularly viola players and violinists -and also to brass and percussion players. As we enlarge our string sections it will gradually be possible tackle works for larger late-romantic/20th Century orchestra, in which case we will also be looking to expand the woodwind section too - so do please get in touch if you are interested. | ||||||||||||||
| Can I be a deputy? |
With woodwind, doubling up on parts normally doesn't work for the orchestra as a whole or for the individual part players. But players do have other life commitments so we encourage you to take part for an evening and leave your details so that we can let you know opportunities that arise here, or when asked by other other orchestras if you wish. | ||||||||||||||
| What if I can't play? |
The orchestra has a very fine conductor - Owen Leech - and you could learn a lot from being a non-playing supporter as well as being warmly welcomed and appreciated for whatever non-playing role you can take on. For example, you would be highly valued if you could take on a role such as librarian (organising library loans of scores, distributing and collecting back parts), coordinating extra players (such as brass who may only want to come to concerts), treasurer (mainly collecting subscriptions), or preparing and distributing concert programmes and flyers, or managing this website, or just making tea. You are likely to be valued for your participation, and because it frees up players to concentrate on their parts. You are also warmly invited to enjoy, and support the orchestra, by attending concerts or by donation! | ||||||||||||||
| What about finances? | Unfortunately it does require funds to hire good premises for rehearsals and concerts, to secure good professional input from the conductor leader and soloists, and cover incidental costs. The orchestra tries to even out costs over time, but does not aim to build unnecessary reserves. To the extent that costs are not covered by donations, participants are expected to support the orchestra by subscriptions of Ł70 a term which compares well with other orchestras. | ||||||||||||||
| Where can I found out more? | Please visit the forum |
updated 11 February 2007 by webmaster