Hi All
This is a shameless plug for the Esher and Ditton Youth Orchestra...edyo.info/
They are a really small orchestra who train for the first 5 weeks of each term, then do a concert at the end. They do a couple of quite challenging pieces (this term was the Simple Symphony by Britten which according to musical people isn't simple, and something by Corelli which also sounded fab. They also give anyone who wants a chance to do a solo which I thought was lovely.
They are currently strings only so looking for wind/brass as well , although will happily take more strings. I'm actually going to move dd out of Stoneleigh training orchestra - this one seems to teach them a lot more personally and actually gives them quite challenging stuff. Plus she and I would quite like to just do 5 weeks at a time and have some weekends back.
I think the website might say age 11+ but dd is only 10 so I think it's pretty flexible. There's no auditions - they ask for G4 standard.
Please can anyone in the area pass this onto all the musical people that they know - it would be really sad for the orchestra to close due to lack of support.