The world’s first disabled-led national youth orchestra is returning to London

The world’s first disabled-led national youth ensemble, the National Open Youth Orchestra (NOYO), returns to London with an uplifting programme of music for 2025 before continuing their tour in Poole, Cardiff and Birmingham. In a relaxed performance at Milton Court Concert Hall, the orchestra welcomes  a diverse audience – inclusive of disabled and neurodivergent concertgoers and families – for a joyous afternoon of music, in partnership with Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

National Open Youth Orchestra is back

Following the triumph of Feel The Music at Milton Court Concert Hall last year, 16 musicians come together for a 2025 concert tour, Ring Out! No more barriers, just great music, featuring relaxed and British Sign Language-interpreted performances across the UK.

This pioneering ensemble, which brings together disabled and non-disabled musicians aged 11-25, presents an exciting new programme of contemporary classical music including two world premieres.

The National Open Youth Orchestra tour visits four UK cities, with the ensemble appearing in Cardiff for the first time:

• Sunday 27 April 2025, 3-4pm – Milton Court Concert Hall, London.
• Saturday 10 May 2025, 3-4pm – Lighthouse Poole (live and streaming).
• Saturday 17 May 2025, 3-4pm – Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff (debut performance).
• Sunday 8 June 2025, 3-4pm – Birmingham Town Hall.

NOYO launched in September 2018, to provide a progression route for some of the most talented young disabled musicians in the UK. A pioneering inclusive ensemble, NOYO promotes musical excellence, supporting 11–25-year-old disabled and non-disabled musicians to rehearse and perform together. Some of the NOYO musicians play acoustic instruments; others, play accessible electronic instruments. NOYO collaborates with cutting-edge composers to create new and exciting music for a diverse range of musicians and instruments.

The ensemble continues its commitment to new music with the programme for its third series of relaxed concerts, showcasing the orchestra’s genre-bending creativity with two new commissions.

A diverse programme in every sense

National Open Youth Orchestra pianist Oscar Abbott performs the world premiere of Ivor’s Academy Award-winning composer Liam Taylor-West’s piano concerto Ring Out!, commissioned by Dr. John Manley (High Sheriff 2020-21). The piece was due to be performed at the 2020 High Sheriff’s Concert at Bristol Cathedral, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then, NOYO’s young members’ voices continue to be central to the programme, which includes the world premiere of Yfat Soul Zisso’s Fragile. Commissioned in partnership with nonclassical, this 10-minute composition focusses on climate change, a theme close to their hearts.

The programme also features bold new arrangements of familiar works, including an energetic rendition of Meredith Monk’s minimalist Parlour Games, and a joyful arrangement of the jazz funk tones of Lucky Chops’ Behroozi. Barriers, written by former NOYO member Oliver Cross and performed by the orchestra in 2022, is a heartfelt tribute to lost friends and fellow disabled musicians.

The orchestra also gives new life to Kate Whitley’s Falling, originally composed as part of a collaboration that brought together professional disabled and non-disabled musicians from RNS Moves and BSO Resound.

All pieces in the programme have been composed or re-arranged specifically to showcase NOYO’s instrumentation, which combines traditional acoustic instruments with electronic instruments rarely found in orchestras, such as the bass guitar, or cutting-edge electronic instruments, such as the Clarion ^®, which can be played with any movement of the body. The Clarion is an accessible digital instrument played on an iPad by NOYO musician Evie Read. It is also the first-ever digital instrument to be recognised by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM).

Expressing themselves

Composer Liam Taylor-West says:

The composition features a solo pianist prominently, opening the piece with loud, bold piano chords left to sound in their entirety, like bells being rung out from hilltops, passing signals from one place to another. I pictured the rest of the ensemble emerging slowly from these piano chords, with the music expanding to tell a story, before fading away and leaving the audience with just the bells again. I can’t wait to hear NOYO musicians sharing their interpretation of this story emerging between the bell chords.

On the concert series’ theme, Taylor-West says:

I love that the phrase ‘Ring Out!’ is being associated with a sense of pride and unashamedness about the orchestra’s unconventional, innovative music.

Yfat Soul Zisso says:

Fragile was composed as a journey, with the beauty and serenity of nature being gradually attacked and altered, and our emotional response to this happening, the anger that makes us decide to fight back and defend our environment – What does it take for us to acknowledge rather than ignore the attack, to step up and use our voices to stop it? I wanted the piece to have all these viewpoints and emotions, so it would hopefully represent both my feelings and the musicians’, giving them a musical voice to express themselves on a topic they deeply care about.

Fragile was written in a more flexible way with NOYO in mind, with no fixed instrumentation given. It’s a piece that could be played by any type of flexible ensemble in the future. It shows the importance of accessibility when composing new music.

National Open Youth Orchestra: groundbreaking

Lilian Hopper, NOYO oboist says:

NOYO is such a fun ensemble to play in, and I think that enjoyment really comes through in our concerts. We do a wide variety of music, and each piece is arranged to suit the orchestra, creating interesting new takes on existing songs. There’s something in there for just about everyone, but my personal favourite in the lineup is Behroozi. It’s just so funky, and I rarely get to play jazzy pieces like it on the oboe.

I love big performances. What I like less are the hours of rehearsing with barely any breaks in between that usually come before that. It takes all my energy and sometimes also my enjoyment of the performance part. But in NOYO, the timing and the way things are organised works a lot better for me, so I can focus more on just playing good music instead of masking how I feel. It’s a place where I can work with my differences instead of trying to compensate for them all the time.

Tickets for the National Open Youth Orchestra concert at Milton Court Concert Hall, London, on 27 April are on sale now, bookable from the event page.

All National Open Youth Orchestra musicians have come through the ranks of five regional NOYO Ensembles, which are delivered through major partnerships in locations across the country.

Featured image supplied