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Who remembers Gavin Park? The answer is, surely, anyone who can recall the early days of Messiah from Scratch®. While the original 1974 inspiration clearly came from Messrs Monro and Burgess, that first Messiah would have been a one-off wonder but for Gavin Park. As the first-night conductor, it was Gavin’s courage, determination and cool […]

Our final Summer School, the tenth, was a huge success from all angles: musically, socially, geographically – even the rain held off most of the time. The only downside was that it was the last in a glorious 10-year run. Judging by the feedback, these summer weeks have brought immense pleasure to many hundreds of […]

Book now for the Costa del Sol – TRBC’s spring singing holiday to twin destinations in southern Spain. We tempt you with sunny music to complement the expected sunshine in Andalusia. Together with our travel partners, Specialised Travel Concert Touring, we have put together a wonderful package. Head to our Costa del Sol booking page […]

Our 1974 vocal soloists proved rather hard to track down 50 years later. We knew all the names, of course: Grace Dives, Annette Bisdorff, Richard Frewer and Noel Noble. No trace could be found of Annette Bisdorff, who had returned to Germany where the trail ran cold. A few old recordings surfaced on second-hand record […]

Messiah from Scratch has always been a family business. At the beginning, the founders and many of those who played or sang belonged either to the Imperial College scientific ‘family’ or to the family of Music Campers who met during the year to do what it said on the tin: camp and perform music. As […]

Bach’s B Minor Mass will be performed on Saturday 17 August in the stunning chapel of Keble College, Oxford. The concert concludes TRBC’s week-long Summer School and we are delighted to be performing in such a marvellous acoustic. Bach composed the B Minor Mass in stages. The earliest sections date from 1733, when he submitted […]

‘The Tuesday Partnership’ was the name adopted by the four founders of ‘Messiah from Scratch’. All were scientists at Imperial College, London and three of them were keen amateur musicians. Don Monro, a Canadian electrical engineer and amateur clarinettist, played in the University of London Orchestra and elsewhere. In his own words: ‘I was active […]

The first Messiah from Scratch burst upon an anticipatory public on 5 December 1974. Earlier in the year, Don Monro and David Burgess, two scientists working at Imperial College London, had an idea over lunch. Wouldn’t it be fun to hire the Royal Albert Hall and put on an unrehearsed performance of Handel’s Messiah? Whacky […]