The National Concert Orchestra of Great Britain conducts search for sponsors who would play their part

The National Concert Orchestra of Great Britain was formed with two specific remits: (a)to provide valuable work opportunities for graduate music students; and (b) to perform music repertoire which is commercially feasible and desirable.

The orchestra itself is basically fixed at thirty musicians and is expanded to forty-five musicians on occasion. The repertoire performed ranges from 'Popular Classical' to 'Light Popular' and a variety of concert performances, not limited to its recent Bat - the Symphony tour (the music of Meatloaf), Abba - the Symphony, A Festival for Christmas, which features the widest range of popular classical and Easy Listening.

The concert performances also include The Last Night of the Proms, which is given a more 21st Century approach (as were the highly successful BBC Proms 2007 with Michael Ball), The Vienna Proms, which are appreciated by a wider public than most orchestras realise and A Festival of Film, which plays the most popular film music from the American Billboard Top 100.

In 2008, the orchestra was the only professional British orchestra to perform a concert of music to celebrate the centenary of composer Leroy Anderson (Sleigh Ride, The Typewriter, Belle of the Ball, Blue Tango and twenty more very popular tunes) whilst in America and Scandinavia - almost every orchestra performed a concert of his music!

The sponsorship opportunity is for a person or persons, with a genuine interest in a wide genre of orchestral music, to participate in the development of the orchestra, its players (who are mostly in their early twenties) and in overseeing the presentation to a wider public of music repertoire other than the heavy classics.

"As Musical Direcor and Conductor of the orchestra", says Greg Francis, "my own experience has been in writing orchestrations and conducting some of the well known orchestras, including five years with various of the BBC (light) orchestras in the 1980s and the German Radio Orchestras (NDR and HR Frankfurt).

"I have most recently orchestrated for and conducted two programmes of popular music for the RLPO (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) which have been extremely popular with the wider public. As I am now sixty-two years of age, I have the personal time and resources to provide most of the musical orchestrations to the orchestra free of charge, and so none of the sponsorship money would be used for this purpose.

"To sponsor one concert of any of the above music programmes would require an input of up to, but not exceeding, £5,700.00, to guarantee against any unexpected losses. We do not require sponsorship to purchase instruments or music parts. The orchestra has forward bookings for 2010 and into 2011".

Contact: Greg Francis, Musical Director

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