Warwickshire orchestra members create tribute piece for key workers

The members of an orchestra in Warwickshire worked together to create a piece in tribute to key workers.

The Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra (WSO), which is in its 78th season and usually rehearses at Myton School in Warwick, worked together to create the video.

Members performed the Radetzky March by Johann Strauss Sr individually from their own homes and this was then collated into one video to create a tribute to the NHS and key workers.

Roger Coull, conductor and violinist leader of the Coull String Quartet and principal conductor of the WSO, co-ordinated the project with the orchestra chairman and other members to create the video.

Roger said: "We were lucky to give our last concert on March 14 just before the lockdown.

"Our next concerts were meant to be in May and June and usually the orchestra does five or six concerts a year and we meet regularly and this all suddenly came to an abrupt halt.

"I came up with an idea to do something that would actually bring people together. I set it up with the chairman Raymond Joyce, who got in touch with our members.

"We decided on this project to keep a sense of community and belonging within the orchestra and we wanted a piece that was uplifting and could act as a tribute to our key workers.

"I realised the option of doing this live was technologically not possible. When you talk over Zoom or Skype you don't notice a time lag but if we were a second out you would notice.

"I decided on the Radetzky March and sent everybody what they needed to play individually at home.

"Most of the orchestra took part and we worked around some things such as we had one trombonist but there were three trombone parts but our trombonist said he would play all three separately."

After receiving the players' videos, Roger and Audrey Johnson, who is also a member of the orchestra, worked to sort the audio files out and mix together to create the one piece.

Roger said: "We had 57 separate tracks to work on.

"Some videos had different volumes and so on so we had to balance them all on the computer. This was something I had always dabbled in but I have never done something to this scale.

"It took around two weeks to put the video together."

Since the video was shared on social media it has reached people all around the globe

"The video has been doing well on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter" said Roger. "It is amazing to see how many people all over the world have been messaging saying they enjoyed it.

"We have had people from Australia, the US, Hong Kong and Germany get in touch."

To keep up to date with the Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra go to: https://wso.org.uk/