Aylesbury Youth Orchestra

On Friday, 30 October, 1998, John Otway played a concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The gig saw him reunited with his first band - the Aylesbury Youth Orchestra (although none of the original members from Otway's days were there). Subsequently the three pieces they performed (Birthday Boy, The Highwayman and Geneva) were recorded and released as a CD single.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to drag eight members of AYO to the beer garden of a local pub, and recorded an interview with them, some excerpts of which have been transcribed below, to give a little background information about the run up to the Royal Albert Hall gig. Given how well they played, I think you might be surprised to learn how little time they had to rehearse.

For those of you with fast or free connections, the vast majority of the interview will shortly be available as an MP3 file.

Aylesbury Music Centre, the home of AYO, is also urgently seeking donations for a new building. Purchasing the CD will help towards this, but if you wish to do more, there are more details below, taken as-is from AMC's own literature.

It was a balmy summer's night, just after the launch of the Birthday Boy CD when I joined eight unsuspecting members of Aylesbury Youth Orchestra at my favourite pub (The Five Bells in Weston Turville) to discuss the events that had led up to that landmark occasion. The interview itself will be available here shortly as an MP3 file, but for those of you who can't wait, or who don't want to download the whole thing, some of the more pertinent questions and answers are given below.

The eight interviewees were Daveth, Carys, Leah, Benedict, Hamish, Daniel, Rosemary and Vaz. The one interviewer was me, Xav. To simplify matters, the answers below are not attributed to individual people - you'll have to get the MP3 to work out who said what to whom.

Xav: How far beforehand did you start rehearsing for the Albert Hall gig?
AYO: About two months, but they changed our music - the guy came in and took it all away... and gave us something completely different. It was good fun though - it was lovely having somebody making it for us. We didn't have that many rehearsals really.

Xav: At what point did you first meet Otway?
AYO: Right at the start - he was so good, he came every time. He's like nothing I'd ever seen before, his whole body language and actions - we were all just sitting there watching him going "is he for real?"

Xav: Did Otway give you any idea of what else he did?
AYO: He said " Don't be worried - nobody'll get hurt in anything I'm going to do"

Xav: Throughout the course of the rehearsals was it just John and Richard that turned up?
AYO: The composer and his girlfriend came... we only saw the Big Band [at] the rehearsal before we were due to play.

Xav: You had a couple of months of rehearsals; how many rehearsals would that have been - was it once a week?
AYO: Yeah, every Youth Orchestra - Saturday mornings, nine to eleven - we really didn't have a lot of time, and we had other bits to do as well; we had other concerts coming up. We were waiting for music to come for a lot of the time, and Geneva took ages to come - we didn't do that until a couple of weeks before. The Highwayman was really difficult - especially getting the percussion in the right places in the vocal part.

----8<---- Whole section about the RAH gig snipped - it's on the MP3  ----8<----

Xav: Okay, [tell me about] the subsequent recording of the three tracks...?
AYO: THAT WAS AWFUL!!! Every single note, you could hear they kept saying "can we do from bar 1 to bar 3001 because one bassoon is out in the middle". Richard said that he thought our playing on the recording was better than in the Albert Hall.

Xav: Did you do any more rehearsals between then [the RAH gig] and the recording?
AYO: No, only that day. We had about an hour before they started recording.

Xav: Was it all done in the course of a normal rehearsal?
AYO: No, it took hours! It was supposed to be from six till nine, but we got out at about ten. We didn't have any vocals, by the way - they were all added later, which was why it was so difficult - especially The Highwayman.

Xav: And how long ago was that?
AYO: It was April [1999 - the CD went on sale on 17th July]

The excerpts above represent only a small proportion of the full 45 minute interview. I intend to turn the interview into an MP3 file so that you can hear the whole thing. The file will be mono, and with a low bitrate setting, which I hope will keep the filesize down. This will be coming as soon as I have invested in a compressor to even out the volume differences in the original recording - so expect it in 3 to 4 weeks.

WHY MUSIC EDUCATION?

Quality music tuition has been shown to have a significant impact on children: improving cognitive & co-ordination skills, team-working,and social skills.

OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED BY AYLESBURY MUSIC CENTRE

Aylesbury Music Centre offers the young people of Aylesbury Vale a unique and comprehensive range of opportunities in all areas of musical experience. We are a quality, professional teaching team, dedicated to excellence in music education. The Centre provides a well structured, caring environment in which every child is encouraged and cherished, whatever his or her musical skills or aspirations may be.

OUR NATIONAL REPUTATION

Aylesbury Music Centre has a reputation for excellence, gaining national recognition for its achievements. Many of our students are accustomed to performing at such prestigious venues as The Royal Festival Hall, The Royal Albert Hall, Buckingham Palace and The London Palladium. Two of our ensembles have played for the Prime Minister at his country residence:Chequers, and many have performed on TV, & Radio. Each, year one or more of our ensembles reaches the Finals of Europe's largest festival of music: The National Festival of Music for Youth. In 1998, four of our ensembles were awarded Outstanding Performance Awards in the National Festival: and two of these ensembles (the Dance Band and Senior Chamber Ensemble) were selected to perform in the Schools Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. No other Music Centre from the whole of Great Britain achieved such distinction. This year, our Concert Band, Youth Orchestra & Chamber Orchestra are all Finalists in The National Festival.

(Since this was written, the Youth Orchestra have, in fact, won the 1999 National Festival, and will be performing in the Schools Proms at the end of the year - Xav)

Aylesbury Music Centre is a vibrant educational and cultural resource in our community, offering exciting opportunities to children of all levels of ability, in a friendly environment

YOUR HELP IS VITAL!

THE DESPERATE NEED: As one of the largest, busiest and most successful of Britain's music centres, Aylesbury Music Centre is quite simply too complex and vibrant an operation to exist with no premises of its own, administered from one hired classroom 1.5 miles away from its main activity base!

THE SOLUTION: To build dedicated premises for Aylesbury Music Centre which will substantially enhance the quality and breadth of service which the Centre is able to offer its students: giving improved rehearsal & performance facilities, excellent teaching rooms, appropriate percussion storage, a musiclibrary & music technology room, and much needed on-site administrative quarters.

THE GOOD NEWS: The Government's Department for Education have recognised our very real and urgent need for premises, by agreeing to put £214,000 towards our "PREMISES 2000" project - subject to that sum being matched by our own fundraising. Accordingly, each £1 you contribute actually produces £2 towards the project! Furthermore, Aylesbury High School has kindly agreed to make available land on the school's site for our premises to be built! These two hugely valuable ingredients make this a "once in alifetime" opportunity to address the Centre's premises needs.

THE COST: The Music Centre will cost £600,000 to build. With the Government grant of £214,000, and some £50,000 additional money already raised from other sources, we are already nearly half way to the target sum! We are making every effort to gain support from Trusts and other bodies.

YOUR HELP: With the financial support of you - the families (present and past) and friends of Aylesbury Music Centre, we will reach our target of £600,000. Your donation, however small, will be most gratefully received. A covenanted donation over 4 years is worth an extra 30% to us as tax can be reclaimed on covenanted money, (a covenant of just £50 per year over 4 years will bring £260 to our funds). You may know grandparents, past members, local businesses or others who may like to contribute to this exciting and worthwhile project.

URGENT:

We plan to have the Music Centre premises built by the Autumn of 2000.

On behalf of all current members of the Centre, and indeed, future generations of young musicians in our area, I appeal to you to give as generously as you can to enable the success of our "PREMISES 2000" project. I thank you now for your support, and look forward to keeping youfully informed of the progress of our appeal.

Hugh Molloy
Head, Aylesbury Music Centre

Below is a rough copy of the donation form supplied with AMC's own literature. Feel free to print this out to use if you wish to make a donation:

TO:
PREMISES 2000,
AMC Office,
Elmhurst Middle School,
Dunsham Lane,
Aylesbury,
Bucks,
HP20 2DB

NAME:..............................................

TEL:...............................................

ADDRESS:...........................................

...................................................

...................................................

...................................................

POSTCODE:..........................................

I enclose a donation (cheques payable to A.M.C.) of £.......... towards the "PREMISES 2000" appeal.

N.B.
To save money, no receipt will be issued unless the following box is ticked: [ ]

I am interested in making a donation by covenant of £......... per year, for 4 years. Please send me the necessary documentation.

I may be able to help in other ways (please indicate below)

Signed:................................................