02/06/2026
What a fantastic evening we had had on Saturday at GYWO's concert. A huge congratulations to Phil & all the performers and thank you to Bryony who has summed it up for us.
"Saturday at Pip and Jims (St Philip and St James Church, Cheltenham) where the Gloucestershire Youth Wind Orchestra (GYWO) were playing was hot in every sense of the word. The temperature however, did not put off the audience, and that meant that a full house got to experience some seriously high temperature (and high tempo) playing (yes, I’m talking about Anya McDonald who soloed Tico Tico on the trumpet so quickly and impressively that her fingers were a blur).
GYWO opened in their usual high energy, joyful way with Birdland, to set up a performance that we all knew was going to bring the heat in a way that would make us forget the temperature. Birdland was followed by Westside Story, and then the aforementioned Tico Tico where we were all considering dancing in our seats.
For a change of pace and tone, GYWO introduced their first guest singer: Robbie Gardner, who stunned the audience with an emotional rendition of Feeling Good that was reminiscent of Michael Buble’s.
Then the wind orchestra picked up the pace again with Disney’s Aladdin.
A second professional singer, Lauren May Garraghan wowed us with Get Happy and the first half of the concert concluded with the stunning Fate of the Gods, in which the instrumentalists brought us to Ragnarök (where the world, perhaps ironically, ends when the cosmos is set on fire and the scorched earth sinks into the boiling sea) and back again.
The second half began in a more chilled way, after a surprising number of hot drinks were sold, with Concerto D Amore, which led us to Loch Lomond and a cooler Scotland. Robbie Gardner asked us if we’d met Miss Jones and then Lois and Robyn took us back up North with a sensational performance of Celtic Flutes, supported by the rest of the orchestra (and almost by phone alarm, which gave us a good laugh at least).
Lauren sang Cheek to Cheek beautifully, a’la Ginger Rogers and some of the orchestra were shocked to learn it had been number one in the charts for eleven weeks – yes children, the charts have been around since 1936 (when the first record sales were compiled by Billboard magazine).
Alexander Taylor changed the style of the night again with a note perfect piano solo of Brahms Romance and, as a side note, we may well be collecting to buy him a pair of skates as he was running back and forth between the piano and his horn all night! Well done, Alexander.
Lauren and Robbie duetted beautifully with They Can’t Take That Away, and the concert concluded with a reminder that a good evening can always start at the cinema. The wind orchestra began with a Star Wars; Force Awakens and finished with Pixar Movie Magic, in which the saxophones shared that we always have a friend in them! Which, of course we do.
This isn’t the last GYWO concert this year, but it is the last concert GYWO will be performing alone (without the rest of the Gloucestershire Music line up) and so it was a special concert for their Musical Director Phil Storer who has been with GYWO for seven years and will be leaving at the end of the summer after their tour to Leipzig in Germany. Phil’s legacy cannot be written in a single paragraph of a review, but he has nurtured the young musicians in Gloucestershire for many years, and has left them better players, with a love of ensemble playing, of a wide variety of music and of Phil himself. Phil will be sorely missed and we can only hope that the next crop of GYWO players and the audiences who get to listen to them are as lucky as the last ones have been. Thank you for all the wonderful concerts, Phil!"
We are all looking forward to the Summer Showcase, at Pittville Pump Room at 4pm on the 28th June (and praying for lower temperatures).
