This is an archived post from our old website. Please excuse us if it looks a bit off, we are working through old posts and making sure they look tip top!
Over the last 15 weeks, the Scarborough Spa Orchestra has played 137 concerts, every one of them completely different from the rest. During that time almost 800 pieces of music have been played in different combinations to make up some 1900 programmed items.
It’s a great tribute to the Spa Orchestra members that they can sit down and play all of this music to their usual professional standard with little or no rehearsal. Deputy players who have to stand in from time to time are usually exhausted after a couple of days, often not realising the exhausting demands that are to be placed on them. Professional musicians in our major symphony orchestras may not expect to play so much music in 15 years, let alone 15 weeks.
For each of these 1,900 items, the Spa music librarians have to take the music from the library shelves and issue them to each of the ten musicians, making 19,000 pieces of music in all. Then they have to put them all back on the shelves, handling in total 38,000 musical scores.
To round off the season, Musical Director Paul Laidlaw has chosen one piece from each of the 15 Thursday night galas to celebrate a particularly successful summer. On Thursday 17th September the audience can expect to hear Frank Sinatra rubbing shoulders with Puccini, music by Johann Strauss side by side with Andrew Lloyd Webber, film themes, Gilbert and Sullivan, Ivor Novello and much much more. This will probably prove to be the most varied programme of the entire season, certainly offering something for everyone.
As the summer season comes to a close, plans are already in hand for the Spa Orchestra’s traditional New Year’s Day concert of musical gems from the Strauss family, Franz Lehar and other light music composers who found fame and fortune in Vienna. Advance bookings are already in the 100s.
Finally, check the BBC website and search Get Creative – Arts. Here, under seaside-rock-music, you will find photographs and an article all about the Spa Orchestra past and present.
Tickets for ‘Gala of Galas’ are priced at £11, with children going free with a paying adult. Tickets are available from The Spa’s Box Office (01723) 821 888 and via www.scarboroughspa.co.uk
