Background info on organising/plans
for NBFSO

To set the scene, let me describe a couple of different organisational structures for amateur-orchestra-running - and then I'll explain which elements I plan to take from each.

1. A typical way: committee plus conductor/director

The most traditional structure is where there's a committee made up of players, which then hires a conductor. In that model:

Many composers over the last few hundred years have written orchestral music for a predictable/traditional line-up of instruments which doesn't vary much. And the sheet music for many of these pieces is stored in music libraries, which hire it out to both professional and amateur orchestras.

At a committee meeting, the committee and the conductor would discuss music to play in coming terms. Typically, most or all of these pieces will be ones you could hire from a music library. The conductor is likely to have a wide knowledge of the possible pieces and might come with a list of "here's what I'd like to do". Experienced committee members might also have ideas.

The discussion would take into account artistic/musical factors: for example, if you're playing three pieces in the coming term, you want to ensure there's a nice variety among them. It would also take into account skill & practicality: for example, "this piece has a difficult trumpet solo which is important, so we probably only want to do it if we have a good trumpeter playing this term".

On the orchestra's volunteer committee, typically there'll be a "librarian" role.

If the librarian can't get hold of one of the pieces after all - perhaps because another orchestra has already booked that particular set of parts for that term - then they'd report back, and the group would pick a different one instead. The music-planning therefore has to happen a fair way ahead.

I've played in quite a few typical orchestras of this type (on either violin or bassoon).

2. A less common way: one person runs it all

On the other hand, Da Capo started as an evening class, with just one person preparing all the music and doing all the admin. Its inventor & original organiser was actually my mum, Patsy Moore, which is part of why I know so much about running this kind of orchestra. Family business!

Da Capo doesn't typically play "off the shelf" music which already exists in a big music library somewhere, or can be bought direct from a publisher. Its lineup doesn't match a traditional orchestra, and it can vary more than a traditional orchestra in terms of how much past experience each of the players has. So there can be a lot more work involved: finding out the individual levels of players, and writing and/or arranging parts to suit everyone. Patsy was always on the lookout for interesting music which could be arranged to suit the orchestra, often old pieces by composers such as Bach or Gabrieli.

3. My hybrid plan

Like the second model, the new orchestra will have customised music, as part of making it accessible to beginners. That would be a big part of my job as conductor & music organiser.

In the short term, I can do the admin as well as all that.

In the longer term, what I'd like is for me to concentrate on the musical & learning side, overall strategy, and ensuring people feel welcome. So at some point after things are up and running, I'll be looking to offload some of the routine admin: either to a volunteer committee, or potentially some of it to a paid assistant.

This would put the organising structure kind of "in between" the two models I describe above. It's not quite the classic committee/conductor split, because - due to the customising of music - I'll need more communication with individual players, and I'll be writing &/or arranging as well as conducting. But it's also not "me doing it all by myself", which for me I don't think would be sustainable.

As to the details, we'd have to see as we go what works best.

(I can already say that the bit I would most want to offload, if/when I could, is keeping track of individual people's subs. In principle, I'm perfectly capable of that kind of task - but I always have to struggle against the temptation to put it off, and then it can easily drift into a muddle of "wait, did that money ever actually arrive or not" etc which takes even more effort to untangle! Even the tedious parts of wrangling music, like fixing the layout of the printable page and suchlike, are much more appealing to me than money-admin.

I also think it would be good to have a "welcoming team" alongside me to ensure that newcomers get looked after, even though I do enjoy that aspect of creating spaces.)

The early stages

To make it viable to start, so there was both enough money for the venue hire and a reasonable wage for me (inc all the music-prep), I would like to find around 24 players who would want to jump right in, and commit to a 3- 4- or 5-week pilot term.

For this first round of admin, I expect I'd be doing everything - but trying to be transparent so other people understand which jobs could potentially be shared out to volunteers, and/or which jobs nobody really wants to do without pay :-)

I'm happy to discuss the cashflow/money side of it with anyone seriously interested in getting involved.

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