The Really Terrible Orchestra

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[edit] The Really Terrible Orchestra

In 1995 Edinburgh-based businessman Peter Stevenson and best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith became envious of the enjoyment their children were having with their school orchestras and decided to look for a local amateur orchestra with which they could revel in playing music for the fun of it. To their dismay none such organisation seemed to exist. The Really Terrible Orchestra (RTO) was born.

Since 1995 the orchestra has provided refuge for the cream of Edinburgh's musically disadvantaged where the use of sheet music is discouraged for being "too distracting." Children are banned from joining the orchestra for fear that they might show up their parents. Famous pieces are put through the RTO wringer and emerge virtually unrecognisable after the orchestra's unique interpretation. Classics such as "King of the Road," "Yellow Submarine" and "Pomp and Circumstance" are subjected to, indisputably, the most incapable of recitals, enough to reduce those who wander into the performance (no doubt to investigate the sounds of a cat massacre) to wince in physical pain.

Every so often, the orchestra convene at a local children's school to "rehearse." So begins a two hour marathon of discordant chaos, a pandemonic circus of musical damp squibs held together valiantly (but oh so loosely) by prestigious conductor Sir Richard Neville Towle, (never actually knighted) the title claimed to lend the orchestra a bit more respectability.

Aside from their yearly concerts at the Edinburgh Fringe, the orchestra also features in the novel "The Sunday Philosophy Club" by author and co-founder Alexander McCall Smith who has a massive worldwide following. In the foyer of the Canongate Kirk, an Edinburgh church and their regular venue, CDs of their performances can be found available to buy, which astonishingly seem to sell quite well.

In 2005 a documentary was made about the RTO that gave insight into their reasons for playing and their audience's reasons for listening. The film "The Really Terrible Orchestra" (directed by Edward Brooke-Hitching) was selected for the 60th International Edinburgh Film Festival in 2006 and won the Baillie Gifford Award for best short Scottish documentary.