At the start of this term, a number of girls in Lower School were offered the unique opportunity to have a series of free lessons on a number of ‘minority’ instruments. Girls in the Remove have risen to the challenge of learning the oboe and bassoon, viola, cello, double bass and harp, and the whole range of brass instruments in the hope of providing Downe’s orchestra of the future.

On a snowy Sunday morning on the last weekend of term, this specially selected group of young musicians gathered in the Concert Room to give a quite remarkable concert on a range of instruments that only ten weeks earlier they had never even picked up!

If the girls’ enthusiasm, commitment and initial progress are anything to go by, the future of orchestral music at Downe House is in good hands!