The London Doctors Orchestra and Choir.
In last Monday’s (12/9) Telegraph (London), Ivan Hewett writes, “It’s a tricky moment in a large airy room at Charing Cross Hospital in West London. Lots of carefully coordinated movements of skilled surgeons and anaesthetists have to come together all at once…. Even the smallest slip could spell disaster. But we’re not in an operating theatre, and no-one’s life is at stake. In fact, we’re in the hospital’s … chapel, where the London Doctors Orchestra and Chorus is rehearsing for its upcoming concert…. The London Doctors Orchestra is a member of that sub-group of orchestras, often overlooked in surveys of amateur music-making, which spring from a particular profession. There are orchestras of lawyers, civil servants, police officers—and medics. This particular one has now been in existence for 15 years … They’re a scarily high-achieving bunch, several of whom toyed with the idea of going into music professionally…. It’s the same story over at the London Phoenix Orchestra, which started life as the amateur orchestra of the insurance industry…. With the Blue Light Orchestra, the vital factor that links the job to the orchestra is something different … a feeling of camaraderie in stressful situations…. What makes these institutional organizations unique is the way two different sorts of camaraderie come together: the day-time one on the job, with all its stresses and strains, and the magic one after dark, when worries can be dissolved away in the joy of music.”
