For immediate release: 15th March 2021

Record Makers

• Orchid Classics & The Yehudi Menuhin School announce exciting new collaboration
• New relationship offers chance for exceptional young talents from around the world to make and release their first professional recordings

London-based record label Orchid Classics are set to launch an exciting new partnership with The Yehudi Menuhin School designed to introduce outstanding young musicians to the intense concentration, discipline and satisfaction of recording. Its first fruits will appear in 2022 with the release of an album comprising performances by a selection of exceptional talents from the Surrey-based school’s international cohort. It and subsequent releases will document music made by the next generation of professional performers and be of invaluable experience to their all-round musical and personal development.

The Orchid deal, the first of its kind in the renowned specialist music school’s long history, will run initially for three years, and provide a focal point for followers of some of the world’s finest young instrumentalists. It was directly inspired by the example of the School’s founding father, Yehudi Menuhin. The late, great violinist began his recording career at the age of 13 and remained with the same record label for almost 70 years, the longest contract in the history of recorded music.

Menuhin believed passionately in nurturing excellence from the earliest age, and was equally committed to dissolving barriers between different nationalities, creeds and identities through music and education. He founded the School that bears his name in London in 1963 and oversaw its development after it moved to its present site in the village of Stoke D’Abernon. Pupils have always been offered a place based solely on their talent and passion for music; today around 90% of pupils require financial aid to study.

The Menuhin School is home to The Menuhin Hall, one of Britain’s finest concert halls and recording venues, and it is here that the school’s pupils will record professionally for the first time, an experience which left a profound mark on Yehudi Menuhin himself.

Ashley Wass, Director of Music at the Yehudi Menuhin School, welcomes the new relationship with Orchid and underlines its potential value to the institution’s intake of around 80 boys and girls aged 11 to 19 from more than 20 countries. “This is a wonderful educational opportunity for the remarkably talented pupils of YMS,” he notes. “Our collaboration with Orchid represents an exciting development as the School enters a new phase in its illustrious story. Our first album will showcase the diversity and internationalism of our community, and I can’t think of a more appropriate record label with which to join forces.”

Orchid’s founder and Director, Matthew Trusler, sees the partnership with YMS as a natural evolution of the label’s work. “I’ve always felt it was important for Orchid to work with exceptional young people at the beginning of their careers,” he observes. “We’ve now released award-winning debuts from such artists as sopranos Louise Alder and Natalya Romaniw, pianist Boris Giltburg and Tchaikovsky Competition-winning cellist Andrei Ionita. This new relationship with the Menuhin School is massively exciting in the promise it holds to bring performances by its incredible young musicians to a wider public while allowing them to experience the thrill of making their first recordings.”

For further information on the Yehudi Menuhin School and Orchid Classics please visit:

The Yehudi Menuhin School

https://www.menuhinschool.co.uk/

Orchid Classics

https://www.orchidclassics.com/