I've just participated in a wonderful Winter Workshop that our community orchestra hosts every year. I had great intentions of taking lots of pictures, but my camera battery was almost flat and - silly me - I forgot to take a fully charged spare. So I only got this one photo of Darren our trombonist extraordinaire before the battery gave up the ghost.
Our guest conductor for the workshop was Willem van der Vis from Melbourne. It was hard work and we attempted some challenging pieces, but it was totally absorbing and a great way to spend an evening and a day. We always end these workshops with an "open rehearsal" in front of an audience - not a performance as such, because the four works are still works-in-progress. We will probably play at least some of them at our end of year concert. If you've ever been a little tempted to join a community orchestra, my advice would be to just jump in and do it! It's a wonderful, fun supportive way to enjoy making music with others and you might surprise yourself with what you can do! I play second oboe in our orchestra, but I'm also playing first violin with the "Piccolo Strings" which is a training orchestra - strings only. I've been learning violin for about a year and a half from a wonderful , positive teacher who also happens to be the usual conductor of our orchestra.