A sixteen-year-old cello player from Bishop’s Stortford has been chosen to play in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Suzanne Gale, a Sixth Former at the College, has won one of only 150 coveted places in the orchestra, fending off competition from more than 500 applicants. 

Suzanne will join other talented young musicians for a series of two-week residential courses during the New Year, Easter and Summer holidays, each of which will culminate in performances at some of the finest concert halls in the country. She will have the chance to work with some of the world’s leading conductors and be taught by top professional musicians. 

The Times recently said the Orchestra plays with ‘the kind of finesse any world-class professional orchestra would envy. I’ll put it in a nutshell: the National Youth Orchestra makes you glad to be alive’. 

Next year will see Suzanne playing a varied programme of music in such prestigious venues as Symphony Hall, Birmingham and Barbican Hall, London. She will also play in the NYO’s annual BBC Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. Suzanne’s first experience of the NYO will be soon after Christmas when the Orchestra, conducted by Richard Hickox, will be playing Britten’s ‘War Requiem’. 

NYO Director, Jonathan Vaughan, commented this week: ‘The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain is one of the leading youth orchestras of the world. Aged between 13 and 19, its members are drawn from all walks of life and come from every corner of the country. Selected from hundreds of auditionees, this orchestra is made up of some of Britain’s finest young musicians. The standards that they achieve are breathtaking. Membership is a highly disciplined and challenging experience. Working as a team of highly motivated and determined young people to such a high standard of performance is, for many, an experience that changes their lives forever. If you have any doubts about the youth of today, come and see the NYO’.

Suzanne is the most recent of a number of the College pupils who have been successful in gaining places in national orchestras. Earlier this year fifteen-year-old Lucy Baish was selected for the National Youth Strings Academy and seventeen year old Emily Hatchett joined the National Children’s Wind Orchestra when she was thirteen.