Torbay Symphony Orchestra

An amateur symphony orchestra who under their Musical Director Richard Gonski perform regularly in both the Torbay and South Hams area. Performances take place in The Central Church Torquay and St John`s Church Totnes during March June and November annually.

The Torbay Symphony Orchestra has, over the past few years, become one of the most innovative and forward looking non-professional orchestras in the UK.

The orchestra has two primary aims – to develop the skills and abilities of the musicians as individuals and the orchestra as a group, and to fill a gap in the artistic life of the local community, which suffers from an almost complete absence of orchestral music.

Over the past few years we have been enormously successful in both these areas. The orchestra’s musical achievements now include performances of highly complex contemporary pieces alongside the more familiar classical repertoire, and these have received consistently good reviews and feedback. This is reflected in the growing number of audience members who have joined our Friends scheme and are regular attendees of our concerts. The quality of playing and the adventurous programming have also enabled us to attract soloists of a very high standard. (Marie Macleod, finalist in the Young Musician of the Year, Ofer Falk who has won numerous prizes in international competitions, and Sarah Nicols, the UK’s foremost proponent of contemporary music for the piano are just a few recent examples)

In 2006 we were successful in obtaining grants from a number of Charitable Foundations and including monies from the Lottery Funding `Awards For All’.
This enabled us to achieve many of our objectives. In that year we participated in the
Totnes Festival in September. In October, in collaboration with Dartington College of Arts, we held a `Music of Our Time` weekend, which included workshops, talks and concerts specifically aimed at young (16+) and adult amateur musicians, where they were able to explore the world of contemporary classical music. The weekend ended with a concert of the works studied by the Torbay Symphony Orchestra in the Great Hall at Dartington.

Our audiences constantly tell us how important it is to them that we continue performing in their area – there are no other orchestras that perform on a regular basis in Torquay, or Totnes which are our normal venues. We are wholly committed to this aspect of our work and we actively encourage teenagers and families with children to attend our concerts. With the help of the lottery grant we were able to provide over 150 free tickets to children, students, the elderly and disadvantaged groups to our series of concerts during the season and we intend to continue with this scheme for the foreseeable future.

We see ourselves as a modern, 21st century symphony orchestra, committed to serving the local community and to a continual exploration of the possibilities and opportunities that contemporary music and performance now offers.

View my website http://torbaysymphony.org/