40 Years of Making Music in Medway

By David Prothero, Chairman

 

In 1969 I had just arrived in the Medway Towns and I was unaware of the depth and breadth of the artistic talent and interest that exists here. I was equally unaware that in November of that year ten local players formed themselves into a string orchestra under the baton of James Clinch to give a concert in St. Nicholas’ Church in Strood. This first concert was the birth of the Rochester Arts Orchestra which was to grow to become the City of Rochester Symphony Orchestra – Medway’s own full Symphony Orchestra. I was equally unaware that when I joined as a young player a couple of years after that first concert I would today, as a very proud and newly elected Chairman,  be writing this introduction to the Orchestra’s celebratory 40th Season of splendid concerts here in Chatham’s  Central Theatre Concert Hall.

 

So everyone has aged along with me since those early days – no far from it! The Orchestra has grown to its current size and maintained its youth and sustained its vigour with a great number of the current players probably younger than the orchestra itself. And the audience too has also grown enormously, on occasions almost filling the concert hall demonstrating time and again that the appetite in Medway for the arts certainly and increasingly includes the best of classical symphonic music.

 

All this of course has one overriding aim for both audience and players alike – the music. The November 40th Birthday concert can hardly repeat with our full 65 strong Symphony Orchestra the 1969 inaugural concert played by its visionary ten founders. But we can include the same composers, Britten, Walton and Elgar, this time with their much larger symphonic works to celebrate our own remarkable growth and achievements.

 

The remainder of this Season includes the finest of the orchestral repertoire. Beethoven, Dvorak, Rossini, Grieg and Tchaikovsky reminding us all of these many decades that Medway audiences and players have appreciated and enjoyed the very best of the great musical repertoire with us here in Medway. Join us for the start of the next splendid 40 years!