Maggie Cotton

Maggie Cotton, who retired from The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra after 40 years, gave us a lengthy exposition of what life is like in such an orchestra. She was a percussionist which was very unusual for a woman and this led to many difficulties in her early days. However, it would appear that she had a very good relationship with Sir Simon Rattle, the orchestra’s conductor for many years. During her talk she illustrated some of the strange things the percussion section had to perform on to provide the appropriate noises for some of the modern composers – scratching balloons was one very noisy example.

We learned that orchestral players have a shop steward to look after their interests which include limiting time travel without a break, rest periods and hours of work. There were several other secrets exposed, such as the shuffle to indicate approval or disapproval during a performance and the peculiar happenings when a violin string breaks – she thought the audience would not notice any of these as they always concentrate on the conductor. She travelled the world with the Birmingham orchestra and gave us many anecdotes of adventures in places like Japan and Eastern European countries.

The evening was attended by the Chairman of the Council and sponsored by the Princes Theatre.

Audrey Owens
Press Officer