Enfield Chamber Orchestra

Registered charity no 1119097

After over 60 years as the Enfield String Players, we have changed our focus and name to Enfield Chamber Orchestra (ECho), in order to incorporate a regular body of wind players and become Enfield’s first chamber orchestra and are now a registered charity.

To balance the new wind section, we want to recruit competent string players, particularly in the violin and viola sections. We are a very friendly orchestra who first and foremost enjoy playing great music. As a guide, a minimum standard of Grade 7 is needed to join, but a commitment to rehearsals and improving standards are the most important requirements. We meet on a Monday evening during term time- see rehearsals page for details.

At the end of 2007, Martin Smith was appointed as our new musical director. Martin studied violin with Lionel Bentley and Manoug Parikian at the Royal Academy of Music where he won the Charles Black Scholarship and later studied with Nicholas Roth and the renowned Russian virtuoso Grigori Zhislin. For some years he was in the Duke String Quartet, with whom he appeared throughout the UK and Europe. In 1992 he founded the Ellerdale Trio with cellist Melanie ssssss

Woodcock and pianist Sarah Down. He has been a member of Primavera since 1992, is also a member of the London Mozart Players and works frequently with many of the country’s other leading chamber orchestras. Since 1988 he has led the Dartington Festival Orchestra and since 1996, the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist, Martin Smith has appeared throughout the UK, as well as in the USA, France, Germany, Holland and Denmark. He made his solo début at the South Bank in 1992. Martin plays on a fine Venetian violin made in 1770, which he fell in love in a shop six years ago. His hobbies include poetry, the outdoors, Roman roads and avoiding housework.

Our leader, Sarah Colley, joined the orchestra in 2002. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Maurice Hasson, and has played in many orchestras at home and abroad under the baton of conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner and Jan Pascal Tortelier. She is also a member of the Alexandra String Quartet and has given recitals in the UK, Japan and Malaysia with the classical guitarist Warren Alexander, to whom she is is married. They have three pre-teenage children.

This site was last updated on 23 January 2012

Echo at work in rehearsal with Martin Smith