ELLSO (East London Late Starters’ Orchestra) is a registered charity, started in 1982. Its founder members were inspired by a Tower Hamlets council initiative to encourage children to play stringed instruments. The council had set up a Saturday centre for the best and most motivated pupils and invited parents to drop in for a one-hour sample lesson.
'This was not with a view to getting something going among us lot,' said Chris Shurety, 'just to give us a better understanding of what the children were doing. But we went in there, and for me that was it. I had a preliminary lesson on the cello and I thought, 'This is amazing! I could learn to play these instruments! It was just such an incredible moment’.
Chris and others then went on to set up ELLSO and over 25 years later, hundreds of adults have felt the same thrill at handling these wonderful stringed instruments, many of them for the first time in their lives. For most it comes as a revelation that they, too, can learn to play; that it's never too late and there is nothing, apart from their own inhibitions, to prevent them.
ELLSO wants to break down barriers to music-making. Come and join us.
We are a charity and reliant on member income and donations to fund our activities. Please support us so that we can continue to offer reduced fees in cases of financial need, provide low-cost instrument hire and repair and replace instruments.
Our model has served as the springboard for establishing late starter string orchestras in Yorkshire and other parts of the UK, as well as in New York.
