The Lyndhurst Orchestra

The Lyndhurst Orchestra is named after an historic Methodist Church, in the Lyndhurst area of London. It is now the headquarters of AIR Studios, the top-flight independent facility created by Sir George Martin, the famed record producer, who is often called the "Fifth Beatle" for his part in creating the historic rock group's innovative recorded sound. AIR Studios has several recording halls, including the original church sanctuary, which is excellent for symphonic film soundtrack scoring. Such scoring usually uses a group of professional free-lance musicians hired for a given job by an orchestral contractor. When a record company wanted to identify the orchestra by a given name on a soundtrack release, the name "Lyndhurst Orchestra" was created. It has been used, subsequently, on similar occasions for recordings produced in Lyndhurst Hall. According to Alison Burton of AIR Studios, the Lyndhurst Orchestra name is most often applied when the orchestral contractor is Tonia Duvall. Thus, the Lyndhurst Orchestra is not a permanently constituted ensemble. Each job uses the best available musicians from London's enviable pool of top-rank musicians, many of whom are members of the city's five international-quality, permanent symphony orchestras. Orchestral contractors do tend to call on the same musicians who have done a good job previously, so the group is usually not entirely new from one job to the next.