Next weekend there is a very special concert taking place at St Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham, to celebrate Andrew Downes' 65th birthday. Andrew Downes means a lot to all members of Toscana Strings. As well as being Anna's dad, he was also head of composition at Birmingham Conservatoire when all members of Toscana studied there. Three of us will be performing in this concert; Anna one of our violinists, is leading the Central England Camerata (the orchestra she founded), Car

As well a playing in Toscana, we all do other things including playing with other groups, solos, teaching and non playing work. Last weekend Sophie (our double bass player) was stage manager for Revival Productions. There were two events at Blickling Hall in Norfolk where over 10,000 people attended. The first event was an Ibiza night with the Urban Soul Orchestra and singers, DJ Goldierocks and lasers. The second night was a last night of the proms concert with Sinfonia Viva

If/when you book Toscana Strings, Toscana Strings is who will play for your event. There are five of us; Sally, Anna, Rachel, Heather and Sophie. We do have two deps Carol and Katie who have been playing with us for years and studied at Birmingham Conservatoire. If between us we are unable to play at your event/wedding we will not accept to play in the first place. This is very important to us. It means we maintain an extremely high standard of playing as our ensemble is t

A mini string orchestra, a string quartet with the lower octave added, a rich string sound, enchanting, captivating, charming, engaging, powerful, fabulous ;-) To judge for yourself pop over to our 'About us' page or visit us at lastminutemusician.co.uk. The recordings on both these pages were performed at Symphony Hall - no editing.....we just played! We have also started posting little clips on facebook. These are taken on our phones, sometimes the sound quality isn't fan