Birth of the Academy!

Charles had little or no conducting experience, but he played the harpsichord and could direct from that. Charles wanted to play his way through the Handel organ concertos and for those, Robin could direct from his place as leader. Robin had tabs on musicians who were pupils, former pupils or staff of his school, Easingwold, and also contacts from an orchestra he used to run in the Easingwold area called ‘The Galtres Players’.

There weren’t so many instrumentalists around in those days and it was quite difficult to get them to play as they were in such demand. Certain instruments were particularly hard to get hold of. As a music student home on vacation, I can’t remember contributing much to the discussion, other than, ‘My fiancé is a double bass player… but he’s teaching over in Lytham St Annes.’ (Not for much longer – he soon found himself on the staff of Easingwold School!)

Robin and Charles quickly decided that concerts would need to be during university vacations so that students would be home and available to play. And I think it would have been Robin who decided that the orchestra would have a particular interest in encouraging young players.

So The Academy was born, together with its rather ostentatious name, which the first concert programme from January 1978 defines as being a bit tongue in cheek, but based on the Italian ‘Academia’ (concerned with educating…) and no doubt hoping some glitter would rub off from the well known ‘Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ (which I believe Neville Mariner also directed from the violin).

14 of us played a collection of Baroque pieces in that first concert and if you come along to our 40th Anniversary concert on June 23rd, you will find a facsimile of the programme for that first concert. This has only just come to light, courtesy of Carole Glasby, one of the players, who went on to be Librarian at The University of Gloucester, and had kept it neatly filed away all those years. Once a librarian, always a librarian!

Although she mainly played violin in those days, Carole is now principal viola of The Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra. Carole (now Wrightson) also sent us a couple of Press photos, one of which shows a few of the orchestra huddling together in thick coats rehearsing for that first concert in the church. One of the cellists in that photograph is Karen Humphreys, who went on to be Principal of the Junior Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

Over the years the orchestra has gone from strength to strength. Although still a chamber orchestra, the music we play ranges from Renaissance to 20th Century, and we do stretch the definition of ‘chamber’ rather a lot in some concerts! We take ourselves much more seriously these days too and have a reputation to keep up, focusing on achieving as high a standard of performance in concerts as we possibly can. Gone are the days when a rehearsal was deemed to have been a complete failure if we had not packed up and arrived in The Minster Inn by 9.30 for the last hour of drinking time!

If Charles and Robin were here to hear us these days, I think they would be on the one hand astonished, and on the other justifiably proud of the ball they had set rolling.