The Really Terrible Orchestra (RTO) is a British amateur

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

, founded in 1995 by the

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

-based businessman Peter Stevenson and the author

Alexander McCall Smith Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE (born 24 August 1948), is a British writer. He was raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and formerly Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. He became an expert on medical law an ...

. The inspiration for Stevenson and McCall Smith was the enjoyment that their children were having with their school orchestras. They decided to look for a local amateur orchestra with which they could enjoy playing music for the fun of it. They could not find such an orchestra, and formed the RTO as a result, with Richard Neville Towle as its conductor. McCall Smith has expressed the low quality of the orchestra's playing very directly:

The name was carefully chosen: what it said was what you would get.

Aside from their yearly concerts at the

Edinburgh Fringe The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...

, the orchestra also features in the novel '' The Sunday Philosophy Club'' by

. In the foyer of the

Canongate Kirk The Kirk of the Canongate, or Canongate Kirk, serves the Parish of Canongate in Edinburgh's Old Town, in Scotland. It is a congregation of the Church of Scotland. The parish includes the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the Scottish Parliament. It i ...

, an Edinburgh church and their regular venue, the orchestra sells CDs of their performances. In 2005 a

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

about the RTO, ''The Really Terrible Orchestra'', directed by

Edward Brooke-Hitching Edward Brooke-Hitching is an English author, and a writer and researcher for the BBC panel show QI, as a member of the team known as the "QI Elves". He is the son of the rare book dealer Franklin Brooke-Hitching and a descendant of the printer ...

, was selected for the 60th International Edinburgh Film Festival in 2006. It won the Baillie Gifford Award for best short Scottish documentary. The RTO made their London debut on 3 November 2007 at the Cadogan Hall, London, in a sold-out concert. On 1 April 2009, the RTO travelled to the United States and played at the New York Town Hall on its first (one-date) overseas tour. The orchestra ventured onto Continental Europe for the first time on 16 April 2011. They played two concerts at Utrecht's Academiegebouw as part of the City2Cities Utrecht International Literature Days. The proceedings were dignified by Dutch poets

J. Bernlef Hendrik Jan Marsman (14 January 1937 – 29 October 2012), better known by his pen name, J. Bernlef, was a Dutch writer, poet, novelist and translator, much of whose work centres on mental perception of reality and its expression. He won numerous ...

and Anna Enquist.

References

External links

Official website

''The Really Terrible Orchestra''
a short film by Edward Brooke-Hitching

* ttp://www.glasgowconcerthalls.com/whatson/event/114957-The-Really-Terrible-Orchestra-An-Evening-with-Alexander-McCall-Smith Review {{authority control Really Terrible Orchestra, The

See also

References

External links