Are you aware that Taunton has been the home of a professional symphony orchestra for the past four years? If you are, then you will have noticed that apart from providing the instrumental forces for large choral works, OrchestraWest has quietly disappeared from the scene, or, at the very least, is taking a long interval.

 

OrchestraWest last performed on its own in public at the Taunton Flower Show in August. Since then, the orchestra has appeared twice with Amici, under the direction of John Cole, who founded and conducts both ensembles. Whether OW ventures forth again independently, as the West Country’s only resident professional symphony orchestra, should be a matter of concern to all who live in Somerset. To date, the local papers have turned a deaf ear to pleas for a public debate on the orchestra’s future.

 

OW was founded in 2005 to fill a gap left by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta nearly 20 years ago and in response to the prospects raised by Project Taunton, prospects that included the development of a purpose-built auditorium seating more than 400, which would make symphony and other large-scale performances more financially viable than at present. Although the town has for many years been fortunate to have two resident orchestras - Taunton Sinfonietta and the Somerset County Orchestra - it ceased to play host to fully professional orchestras when county and local authority subsidies for large-scale classical music events dried up in the early 1990s. Today, the Bournemouth Symphony regularly performs in Cheltenham, Bristol, Weymouth, Exeter and Portsmouth, but not in Weston, Taunton or Yeovil.   

 

Between 2006 and 2009, OW consistently delivered superb concerts of much-loved classical fare in school halls, under canvas and in the open air. The inspirational conductor and BBC broadcaster Charles Hazlewood became its patron in 2007 and conducted the orchestra in what was intended as an annual gala event.

 

So what’s the hitch? 

 

OrchestraWest has, from the outset, been a labour of love, and flourished only because of the private philanthropy of a few dedicated individuals and the generosity of the orchestra members themselves, many of whom travel from as far afield as Cardiff and London. The hope was that gradually music lovers in Somerset might so enjoy the opportunities to hear live symphony concerts that attending them might become a habit, something they shared with family and friends. Simultaneously, the longed-for public auditorium would become a reality. Meanwhile, OrchestraWest would travel to some of the larger public venues around the mid and southern part of the county and invite first-class artists to appear with the orchestra in an effort to widen its audience and raise its profile. Sadly, plans for Project Taunton no longer include an auditorium, audiences thinned with the recession and the philanthropy of the few was exhausted.

 

The dream still lives. The members of OW have shown unswerving loyalty to their founding conductor and to us, their public. OW’s management, The Taunton Music Trust, has instituted a pause to enable the trustees to look at ways in which a professional orchestra could flourish in the West Country. 

 

A decision on whether the orchestra will continue is expected soon. A positive outcome undoubtedly will depend on partnerships in the community and expressions of genuine support from the public. The alternative is silence and yet further confirmation of the widely held presumption that outside Bath and Bristol, the West Country remains a musical desert. OrchestraWest offers us a glorious opportunity to surprise and prove them wrong.