"In conversation with" Southampton Youth Orchestra

Southampton Youth Orchestra is a place for Southampton Music Hub’s most advanced young orchestral players to flourish. In this article we hear from director, Chris Braime, assistant director, Kevin Withell and ensemble manager Zoe Hunting, discussing the approach they have taken with online rehearsals.  Also included, are the thoughts on this approach from one of the orchestras players. 

Could you describe how you have been running SYO rehearsals.

CB: Running online rehearsals does present some challenges for orchestral music. We decided to tackle these challenges by using YouTube to create a series of episodic rehearsals that follow this basic pattern: first, giving an introduction and background history to the music; second, listening through to the music being focused on that day alongside a visual score of the music so people can understand better their part in context; and third, a conducted run through of the movement alongside a rolling score.
KW: This seems to have provided an effective way to do some meaningful rehearsal with a full orchestra.

What have you enjoyed about the way SYO rehearsals have been organised?
SYO player: The YouTube videos talking through the music have been very helpful. They give us a good idea of the music.

How has working this way helped to support you learning the repertoire?
SYO player: By listening to the recording and going through the score first, I can get an idea of what is going to come before I play the music.

Have there been any benefits to working online for SYO?

ZH: It has been an exciting opportunity to explore other ways of working with the group and has enabled to players to listen to the whole piece before they start to learn it. In particular, it has been useful for SYO to look in further depth at historical context of the music.  

Is there anything we can take from how SYO have been working to develop further in the future?

CB: Live video offers some very exciting possibilities for the future, including lifestream concerts, something I think we should all be exploring more.  

What are you looking forward to most about being able to meet face to face again?
SYO player: I'm looking forward to having a conductor who can adapt to us and conduct us, rather than the fixed recording which we have to play to.