English composer Gavin Bryars (pictured below) was a teacher at the college and one of the founding members. Bryars liked experimenting with music and it was him that drove the project forward. He encouraged anyone to join of any ability (except people who were good of course). His rules were that if you joined up you had to come to rehearsals every time and at least try to get it right when you were playing. No mucking about basically.

Bryars chose bits of music that were famous so that even if a player couldn’t read music at all he would at least have some idea of whether the next note should be higher or lower and so on, giving them a fighting chance.

Brian Eno (pictured below) was enchanted by the orchestra enough to join and produce their first two albums. It seems that the masses loved the hilarity and the serious musicians enjoyed the abstract nature of it all. Musical artists found it interesting that the orchestra produced ‘clouds of sound’ meaning that rather than everyone hitting the notes bang on, you kind of got an approximation of a well-known piece of music.

The Portsmouth Symposia went on to play a multitude of gigs, including one at the Royal Albert Hall which sold thousands of tickets. They released a collection of classical pieces and also a take on modern pop of the era called “Classical Muddly”.

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