Introduction

Think ‘symphony orchestra’ and a number of images come to mind: beautiful music; concert halls with chandeliers and gilded balconies; a hundred musicians, mainly men, elegantly dressed in tails. All of this may in fact exist, especially in the older capital cities of Europe, but even when the concert halls are dark, there is a lot more happening in the world of the symphony orchestra and the chamber orchestra, especially in the UK and the US. Administratively, there is a welter of fundraising, publicity, marketing and accounting activities, but there is another sphere that works symbiotically with the artistic and administrative areas of the orchestra. In the early twenty-first century, most professional orchestras have Education Departments specifically dedicated to the provision of a range of programmes for their subscribers and for the greater community.

Education programmes are not new: specially designated children's concerts have existed since the early twentieth century, when there was an enthusiastic audience of adults who regarded these concerts as an important supplement to children's general education and as an element in the continuation of family tradition. Nearly a hundred years later, most professional orchestras continue to consider children's concerts as the flagships of their education departments. Nowadays, however, these concerts constitute only a part of a wide array of programmes, serving all segments of the community.