We are the community orchestra of St Neots and district, drawing players from a wide area of Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire. Founded in 1989 and directed by Reginald Searle, our mission is to enable local musicians to have fun playing in an orchestra and to perform public concerts of popular works for local music lovers.

We generally perform four concerts a year. In the spring and autumn, these are purely orchestral; in summer and at Christmas we join forces with St Neots Choral Society, giving us the opportunity to perform choral works (and, at the Christmas concert, giving children the chance to join in!).

Our repertoire is focused on popular classical works – in recent years, for example, we have performed symphonies by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schubert alongside works by Delius, Fauré, Holst, Mendelssohn, Morley, Weber, Strauss, Sulivan and many others.

We also try to include at least one new or unusual piece in each concert. This might be something that’s rarely performed, a new arrangement, or a completely new work. For example, in 2024 our Musical Director Reg Searle made us an arrangement of Tudor and Elizabethan Virginal music from the Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection, and he has also composed new music for us that gives voice to the local landscapes and memories of his youth (e.g. A Day in the Fens).

We are proud to provide opportunities for the next generation of professional musicians to hone their skills and gain experience, whether by performing with us or by composing for us. For example, in 2020 we gave the world premier of Greg May’s composition Toye; Greg played double bass with us while he was at school and subsequently won the 2020 Proms Young Composer competition. Other recent soloists have included our president Jan Kaznowski (violin), talented young musicians David Hadley (oboe), Viviane Plekhotkine (violin) and Méline Le Calvez (clarinet), as well as rising star Ben Goldscheider (French horn).