Christmas Carols in the Community

This week the Southern Sinfonia string quartet went to Lambourn Court (in Newbury) and Brendan Care (in Southampton) to celebrate Christmas with the residents. Both Lambourn Court and Brendan Care provide supported housing for older people.

We’ve been visiting for a number of years now and are really happy to see the audience steadily grow annually. Many residents find it difficult to come to our concerts, so at Christmas we take the music to them- as everyone needs a little bit of live music at Christmas!

This year, the quartet started off with some Christmas favourites to include Winter Wonderland and The Christmas Song (that’s the one that starts ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire’), as well as the Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah and a Sound of Music medley (which was very popular). We then had a cup of tea and some Christmas cake, before we came back and sang some carols together.

We at Southern Sinfonia firmly believe that music should be open to all people, whatever their age, so it was great to see that in action this week. We had a fantastic day and are all feeling very very Chistmassy now and would like to thank the residents and management of Lambourn Court and Brendan Care for their continued commitment, support and enthusiasm.

The team took some pictures, so please feel free to take a look at these below, or check out our Flickr photostream opposite, if you’d like them in a larger format.  

Merry Christmas!!!

Behind the Scenes at Eton

Tuesday saw the orchestra perform with Windsor & Eton Choral Society at Eton College School Hall. Not only was it our first time playing in the newly refurbished school hall (we were all a bit afraid to touch anything it was so beautiful), but it was also the first time we had worked with their new conductor Tim Johnson.

Tim is the new Precentor and Director of Music at Eton College and he replaces Ralph Allwood. The orchestra have done a lot of work with Ralph and WECS over the years, so we were all very sad to see him go, but also very excited to meet Tim.

We had some local school children attend the rehearsal, which was great. In fact, we’re pretty sure we spotted some conductors of tomorrow amongst their number - a couple were doing a serious amount of impressively energetic arm-waving.

Here are some pics of the rehearsal in action:

Tim Johnson (the one in the white shirt), Southern Sinfonia, tenor Adrian Ward (the one in the pink jumper) and the choir

A nice hallway

The orchestra in rehearsal, local school children and the choir

Tim Johnson and the orchestra (plus someone who must have just really wanted to be in this picture)

Tim, the orchestra, school children and the choir

Welcome to Southern Sinfonia's Blog

In our first ever blog entry, we'd like to introduce Southern Sinfonia - a professional chamber orchestra based in Newbury, Berkshire. We play with informed playing-style, that is to say we perform music as it would have sounded when it was first composed. So we play modern music in a modern playing style and music from the baroque period is played with informed phrasing and minimal vibrato. As a result of this, we tend to get up to quite a lot. 

Sir Roger Norrington is our active patron and David Hill is our Music Director and as an orchestra we strive to bring concerts and recitals to a wide area of the South of England – including Winchester, Wells, Canterbury and Cambridge. We are also passionate believers in the benefits music can provide for children and we work in as many schools as we can in our local area to ensure all our primary school children have a foundation in and an understanding of classical music.

We'll introduce you to our  team in later posts, but in the meantime here's some photos to get you started.