WELCOME TO

THE OLD BARN
ORCHESTRAL SOCIETY

OBOS is celebrating its 80th birthday this year with concerts in Chatham, Staplehurst and Maidstone. Programmes include music by Beethoven, Delius, Dvorak, Glazunov, Humperdinck, Rossini, Saint-Saens, Shostakovich and Thaikovsky. As usual, the orchestra is rehearsing for these concerts on Friday evenings in term time in the Maidstone area. Bryan Gipps was appointed the permanent conductor in January 2007. He is well known in the southeast as a conductor, violinist and organist.

The Old Barn Orchestra (the orchestra for Medway and Maidstone) was founded in 1927 and incorporated with a full constitution the following year. Its name derives from its first meeting place, which was the music room - a converted barn - of Dr Ponder and his family at Abbey Court in Sandling (north of Maidstone).

In the 1950s Muriel Anthony was the conductor of OBOS. She was also Director of the Kent Rural Music School (now Kent Music), and she encouraged many music teachers to play in the orchestra. Teachers still play in the orchestra, although there is no formal link with Kent Music. In the last thirty years conductors have included Frank Ray, Martyn Williams, Michael Downes and Christopher Hayward.

Since the 1990s programmes have included Glazunov's Saxophone Concerto, Vaughan Williams' Tuba Concerto, the first performance in Kent of Percy Whitlock's Organ Symphony and less conventional music from the likes of Poulenc, Krommer and Milhaud. Familiar great composers have not been neglected, but the list includes the great symphonists Franck, Balakirev and Bruckner. The 2008 imaginative schedule includes two short works to celebrate the life and work of Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).