South East London Orchestra

Next Concert:

Sunday 26th March 2023 at 4pm

St Michael and All Angels, Beckenham

Glinka: Ruslan and Lyudmilla Overture

Schumann: Scenes from Goethe’s Faust: Overture

Liszt: Hamlet

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D

Tickets are on sale here

We were excited to hold our first “relaxed concert” with our new charity partners, Bromley, Lewisham and Greenwich Mind who provide mental health support services to the local community. SELO’s string orchestra and BLG Mind’s Singing for Wellbeing choir performed at St Michael and All Angels church on Sunday 29th January. See more details of this here. We’ll be collaborating and raising funds for them throughout 2023. More information here

November 2023 Concert

Congratulations to all those who played in and supported the SELO concert on Saturday 26th November. With the Elgar Symphony and the Debussy, this was a very challenging programme and in a new venue for us! Thanks for all your hard work and commitment

About Us

South East London Orchestra is one of south London’s leading orchestras with a reputation for exciting, high quality concerts and a genuine connection with our community.

Our concerts feature great pieces of classical music by composers such as Beethoven, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Weber. SELO is equally at home with the music of the twentieth-century, performing works by Bartok, Copland, Britten, Shostakovich, Debussy, Nielsen, Ravel and Sibelius.

We are proud of our tradition of performing music by British composers, from Boyce, Elgar and Vaughan Williams to more recent works by Lennox Berkeley, Joseph Horovitz and Richard Rodney Bennett. In 2016 we gave the UK premiere performance of a work by Fung Lam.

Based in Beckenham, we have many members from the local area and others from further afield. Our short rehearsal periods, led by conductor David Smith, are designed to appeal to busy musicians, and rehearsals are a fine balance of hard work and enjoyment.

SELO was founded in 2012 by our Music Director, David Smith, and Natalie Cole. Since then we have grown the orchestra and embedded ourselves in the heart of Beckenham’s cultural life.

How to Join

We are very interested to hear from all strings and brass players of grade 8 standard or above and/or substantial experience of playing with large ensembles. See our Joining page for more details