Mel receives a Special Mention
Our Music Director, Mel Le Breuilly, has been given a special mention in the Making Music Awards 2022 for Best Music Director
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Songs from the African-American Railroad
Jennifer writes about her arrangement of Songs from the African-American Railroad
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We’ve been selected for the Adopt a Music Creator project!
RYO and Reading’s Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra were selected to take part in Making Music’s Adopt a Music Creator project 2022.
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Christmas Concert 2021
RYO performed their Christmas Concert at St Joseph’s College, as the PACT Christmas Concert was cancelled. They played three pieces which were recorded for the charity PACT to share with their supporters.
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End of year performance 2021
Two of our members are here to tell you about our year-end performance in September 2021. Elsa reflects on this as the culmination of her time at RYO, and Hannah describes the performance in more detail below. – By Elsa Crook, Cello I joined RYO at the beginning of 2019 at the encouragement of my
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Getting to know English Folk Songs
One of the pieces we are learning this year is the English Folk Song Suite by Ralph Vaughan Williams, arranged by Gordon Jacobs. There have been some fantastic musicians who helped preserve folk songs, including Percy Grainger, Cecil Sharp, and Ralph Vaughan Williams himself, and this piece is a great example – a joyous medley
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2021-22 season starts Friday 17th September
After rather unusual 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, we all have our fingers crossed that this year will be a bit more normal! Making us feel even more excited about the start of a new year is our new rehearsal venue at St Joseph’s College, in their lovely College Hall. We restart on Friday 17th September
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Building our new website
– By Abbey Hardy, Daniel Hobart and Pippa Moore Today we (along with the invaluable contribution of Bernie the dog) have been hard at work digitalising our archives and setting up the brand new RYO website! We’ve spent the day playing detective tracing back loose photographs, pouring over endless programmes, and abusing Mel’s poor scanner.
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Mayer Faust Overture Workshops
– By Abbey Hardy Over the summer holidays (August 2021) members of RYO participated in three online workshop sessions of Mayer’s Faust Overture to celebrate the works of female composers. Although the piece was intimidating at first, members were excited by the challenge the music posed, growing to confidence by the end of the series.
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The Return of Live Rehearsals
– By Pippa Moore 14 months and many Zoom rehearsals later, RYO was finally able to welcome back its members in person for a full live rehearsal in June 2021; it was nice to have the full orchestra together at last. Although strange at first, over the following weeks we all made the adjustment back
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