Our wonderful conductor Philip Norman is also a renowned composer and recently his work “A Lion in the Meadow” – set to the eponymous children’s book by Margaret Mahy – was performed in a live NZSO Storytime concert. Check it out here:

https://live.nzso.co.nz/concerts/storytime-a-lion-in-the-meadow/watch/

An absolute treat for children and adults alike!

We had a wonderful time at our back-to-back Wild Symphony concerts yesterday, which went down an absolute storm. Maestro Mouse did a fantastic job at conducting the Risingholme menagerie and introducing the animal portraits to all the children in the audience. Thank you to all of you who came along. We hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we did!

We have some exciting news, particularly for our young audience members!

Dan Brown is best known as the author of the publishing phenomenon The Da Vinci Code.

Wild Symphony is his first children’s book, and features beautifully-illustrated poems about loveable animal characters, with accompanying signature tunes. There’s even a downloadable app with many great and exciting features!

Risingholme Orchestra is thrilled to be presenting the New Zealand premiere of Wild Symphony. We hope you will join us for a fun-filled afternoon of music and visuals, sure to delight children and adults alike.

There will be two afternoon performances at The Piano on Sunday 11 April, one at 2pm and the other at 4pm. Each concert lasts approximately one hour. There will be copies of the book for sale also!

To book your tickets online, head over to www.trybooking.co.nz/FPJ. Maestro Mouse and his musical friends look forward to welcoming you!

In the meantime, for a sneak preview… click here.

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We had the honour and pleasure of playing with esteemed guitarist Matthew Marshall in late 2018. His new album features compositions by our very own Philip Norman!

For more information and a listen, head over to https://rattle.co.nz/catalogue/releases/brighter-than-blue.

We had a wonderful concert on Sunday. A great time was had by all! Here is some of the feedback we’ve received:

I wanted to send you a note to say how much I enjoyed the concert, and thank you for the opportunity to go. I usually miss events like this because I don’t keep up with what’s on, and loved every minute of it. Sooo looking forward to the next April concert…..

I loved the concert! Music beautifully played and Philip wonderful. Clever, hilarious.

Congratulations. Another enjoyable concert.

Now that we have made it to Level 1 (hooray!) and the Woolston Club has reopened, we are delighted to announce that rehearsals will be starting up again on Thursday 18 June at our usual time of 9.45am. We are very much looking forward to seeing you all. So dust off your instruments, put on your best smiles and let’s play some wonderful music together. See you all on Thursday!

To all our lovely orchestra members and loyal audiences! We hope you are all safe and well and that the same applies to your loved ones. Our worlds have been turned upside down in a very short space of time and we are all profoundly missing one another. Stay strong and positive and keep yourselves immersed in music, which ultimately remains the best therapy for the soul!

Sending love and courage to you all,

your Risingholme Orchestra Committee.