Sign-ups for our 2026 pre-term course running from 6-12 September are now open!

Pre-term is a week-long event run by the Southampton University Symphony Orchestra for new and current students. We have daily rehearsals, socials for all, and a great concert on the final day! It’s an amazing chance to meet new people, make new friends, and play fun and exciting repertoire, all before freshers week and the start of term! It will help you get settled into life in Southampton and give you a taste of what music societies are like. We promise it will be loads of fun and we hope to see you there! 

Our conductor for the week is last year's wonderful president Suzie Knock and your hosts are our social secs for 2026-27, Martha Green and Liv Durman!

For more information see our socials @susorchestra and sign up forms:

Returners: https://forms.gle/Fb9uSTEfCmVPzTed7

Freshers: https://forms.gle/56aGCq6aniAyBvgk7

We look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible!

The Southampton University Symphony Orchestra is widely recognised as one of the leading student orchestras in the UK. The orchestra seeks to provide students with the opportunity to study and perform some of the most challenging symphonic repertoire. We cater both for members seeking to pursue careers in the music profession, as well as those wishing to continue and develop their performance skills whilst completing degrees in non-musical subjects. Many of our members go on to conservatoires after their time at Southampton, while others become doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers and more! We take on a full professional programme each term, and perform around 4 concerts each year including a pre-term orchestral course (see our social medias for more information coming soon). Recent repertoire highlights include Bernstein's On the Waterfront Symphonic Suite, Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, and Dvořák's Symphony No.8. 

In addition to the four concerts a year, our members enjoy a variety of socials and events throughout the year, ensuring there is a great social side to all of our rehearsals and performances. At the end of each academic year we also aim to go on a European tour. Recent destinations have included, Lille and Aachen.

We rehearse every Wednesday during term time from 6:30pm - 9:30pm in Turner Sims Concert Hall on campus, and often perform here as well as other local professional venues.

Auditions are held at the start of each academic year with our auditions for 2026-27 being on 26-27 September (look out for an announcement on our social media pages). If you are a non-Southampton University student but would also like to audition, please get in touch and we will hopefully be able to work something out with you. We additionally offer a concerto competition and a composition competition (more info about these will be released throughout the year).

For more information on what we do, or how to join us, contact our President Finlay Caldow at suso@soton.ac.uk, or check out our socials @susorchestra

Photo credits to Kenneth Leung (@kenlg12345) and Jordan Parker (@jjphotographique)

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The Committee

All clubs and societies within the Students' Union are run entirely by students. The student committee for Symphony Orchestra this year are: