Gloucestershire Symphony Orchestra

www.gloucestershiresymphony.org.uk

Concerts coming up!

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Gloucestershire Symphony Orchestra is launching the new season with the county’s exciting Young Musician of the Year 2020, Darcy Beck. She will be performing Emmanuel Sejourne’s Concerto for Marimba at Cheltenham Town Hall (note this is a change in venue) on Sunday 21 November 2021 (7.30pm) and the programme will include Beethoven’s Symphony No 7 and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll.

Darcy’s performance will herald the return of the hotly-contested Gloucestershire Young Musician of the Year competition.

The concert will be followed up by GSO’s popular family event, The Christmas Cracker, at Cheltenham Town Hall on Sunday 19 December (3pm), when Delibes’s Coppelia Ballet Suite will be performed by dancers from Mandy Godding’s Theatre Arts, among other festive musical treats. Tickets will be available from the Cheltenham Town Hall Box Office.

GSO rehearsals, with musical director Glyn Oxley, began on Tuesday September 7 2021 (7.30-9.30pm) at St Barnabas’ Church, Stroud Road, Gloucester.

Talented young cellist Rebecca McNaught joins GSO in Haydn Concerto

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Talented young cellist Rebecca McNaught will join Gloucestershire Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Haydn’s well-known Cello Concerto in C in June. Rebecca won the Gloucestershire Young Musician title in 2015. Since then, she has completed her undergraduate degree in music at Oxford, where she twice achieved the highest solo performance mark in her year. She now studies at the Royal Academy of Music, and is principal cellist in the Royal Academy Symphony Orchestra. She recently toured Japan with the Royal Academy Soloists.

As well as the Haydn concerto, the concert includes Mendelssohn’s well-loved Italian Symphony, and Mozart’s effervescent overture to his opera Marriage of Figaro.

The concert is at St Catharine’s Church, London Road, Gloucester on Saturday 22 June at 7.30 pm. Full concert and ticket details are here.

Suzanne Blewett celebrates 40 years with GSO

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Cakes and music will combine when GSO celebrates principal flautist Suzanne Blewett’s 40 years with the orchestra at their Spring Concert on Saturday March 23, at 7.30pm in St Barnabas Church, Gloucester. Suzanne will be playing John Rutter’s beautiful Suite Antique and the programme will include Brahms’ Symphony No 1 and Borodin’s Overture to Prince Igor.

Suzanne joined the orchestra as principal flautist at 20 years old, having just left the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where she completed three diplomas in performing and teaching – and won the 20th Century Woodwind Prize. Her teachers were Stanley Gleave, from the Halle Orchestra, and Douglas Townsend.

John Sanders was the conductor of GSO at the time and rehearsals were held in Gloucester Cathedral, where he was organist. Suzanne later played under the baton of Mark Finch until 2013, when current musical director Glyn Oxley took over.

Suzanne’s teaching career took off simultaneously with her joining GSO. It was 40 years ago when she began teaching at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, where former GSO leader Claire Piper was Head of Music. During her career, she taught at several state and independent schools, including Wycliffe College, where she still teaches today.

In 1985, she formed The Cotswold Flute Choir, which had 35 players and toured Malta, Spain and Italy. She ran it single-handedly for 26 years, gaining the support and recognition of the county music service.

Several of Suzanne’s students have won the coveted Gloucestershire Young Musician of the Year contest which is now organised by GSO.

During her 40 years of playing and teaching, Suzanne has travelled to Hong Kong to teach and perform, she has played with the Ma Bellini Quintet in Florence and performed many of the major flute concertos – from Neilson, Chaminade, Reinecke to Mozart. John Rutter’s Suite Antique is one of her favourites.

Suzanne, who lives in Hucclecote with husband Bob, will be celebrating her 40th wedding anniversary this summer.

Tickets £12, £9 (conc) on the door or in advance from www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/spring-concert-tickets-54794921084

War vet Trevor plays in Battle of Somme concert

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Somme concert Trevor Pleass, 90, in his Signals regiment cap

Memories of war will come flooding back for Gloucestershire Symphony Orchestra’s only war veteran 90-year-old Trevor Pleass when he takes part in The Battle of the Somme Centenary silent film concert on July 22nd at Gloucester Guildhall.

Trevor was a member of the Signals Regiment from 1944-48 having previously joined the Home Guard at the tender age of 16. His schooldays were blighted by the Blitz on Cardiff when he frequently spent nights in cold, wet air raid shelters with his family.

The concert is the 100th in a UK-wide series promoted by the Imperial War Museum, who have restored the iconic 1916 silent film The Battle of the Somme. Composer Laura Rossi has written the soundtrack for orchestra and she will be giving a short talk before the concert which starts at 3pm.

It was a truly memorable concert

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‘It was a truly memorable concert’ – this is how Cheltenham composer Colin Decio has described the magnificent Cheltenham Town Hall concert in his honour on Saturday night.

The capacity audience heard the première of his Piano Concerto No 1 superbly performed by soloist Mark Tanner with the Gloucestershire Symphony Orchestra and Gloucestershire Youth Orchestra combining forces under Glyn Oxley’s baton.

A second world première was also performed by fellow Cheltenham composer Vic Carnall, whose concert trust put on the Grand Gala Charity event. Soloist John Stillman played Vic’s Cheltone Rhapsody.

With local composers still to the fore, the second half saw Gustav Holst’s The Planet Suite given a rousing reception by the audience – with an exceptional performance in Neptune from members of the Cheltenham Bach Choir conducted by Tim Morris.

Generous concert-goers gave a total of £1,685 to the retiring collection which is being split between the Gloucester Academy of Music’s bursary fund to make music accessible to all and Murray’s Muscles – a charity supporting those with muscular dystrophy.