Hanging on a string and a prayer: Some are not very good, and they're the very good ones. So why did composer Steve Martland let the East London Late Starters Orchestra loose on his work? Sabine Durrant reports

TONIGHT, at the Royal Festival Hall, the premiere of a new piece by Steve Martland is to be placed in the hands of a group of musicians with one thing in common: they aren't any good. Among them is a violinist who's only just progressed beyond plucking, a cellist (with some years' experience) whose instrument keeps jerking out of position and a viola-player whose scraping of the strings would be more suited to a King Edward potato. But something is certain: the performance will be flawless. Well, almost.

The East London Late Starters Orchestra, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, claims in its pamphlet to be 'more than just an amateur orchestra', but actually it is essence of amateur orchestra. While other local groups call for stringent standards ('trying to pretend they can play Beethoven's Sixth,' says a Late Starter with a grudge), ELLSO actively encourages the absolute beginner. It began life as a 'self-help parents' orchestra' (the children were in the Tower Hamlets String Project) and its aim is to 'break down the psychological barriers of music-making'. It's cheap: pounds 50 a term for the fully waged, pounds 10 for the unemployed. And it's accessible: instruments can be hired (from pounds 10 to pounds 1) and everyone plays together from the start. 'It's very much for people who have never played any music at all,' says Aidan Fisher, one of the four course tutors. 'Or, worse, who have played some and never got very far . . .'

The members - about 70 of them, in fuzzy perms and 'fun' jumpers, jumbo cords and leggings - meet every Saturday in a school on the Commercial Road, E1, where, amid powder-paint collages and a smell of stale savoury pie and cabbage, and after initial group lessons, they squeak and twang their way through a 'hodge-podge' of contemporary and classical compositions. The choice of music is important: adults, slower to learn than children, demand variety and the arrangement must be layered for different abilities (none above Grade 5), including open-stringed parts for complete beginners. James Harrison, who teaches and arranges, admits he would 'never choose a piece of music of which I'm very fond - Schumann, say - something delicate and slow that needs to be played with beauty. It would be decimated.' But he isn't rueful: 'Adults don't come along just to be told, 'Very good, that's very nice'. They want to be constructively criticised. They want to improve.'

Here's Sarah Gall, ELLSO secretary and cellist, in her dangling crochet earings: 'You just completely forget you're a beginner once you're faced with the music.' Here's Chris Shurety, committee-member and violinist, humming 'Greensleeves': 'The group has a drive, an esprit de corps.' Here's Tara, on her first day: 'So much variety in one session and so long. Yes I'm sold, definitely worth getting up for.' Here's Margaret Quail, the chair: 'We're fired by sheer determination - you want it to get righter and righter . . .' And there's Wendy Giles, another tutor, who mouths 'agh' as she conducts Sibelius's Valse triste and spends one of Schoenberg's Little Pieces with her head buried in her hands. 'You tend to go at the speed of the slowest,' says Aidan Fisher. 'If you joined thinking that in a year you would reach Grade 8, you'd be disappointed. But what they lack in talent,' he smiles, smug after a half-way decent trawl through the Jupiter, 'they more than make up for in sheer enthusiasm.'

And enthusiasm can get you a long way. The project with Steve Martland - a series of workshops linked to tonight's BBC Symphony Orchestra performance of Louis Andriessen's De Snelheid - is by no means ELLSO's first rub with the professionals: they've liaised with Schaun Tozer and Nigel Osborne, the Endymion Ensemble, Opera Factory and the London Sinfonietta. In fact, such old hands are they at this collaboration business that one coy violinist thinks they're rather better at it than Martland. 'He's a little inexperienced,' she murmured. 'For instance, it was us who suggested we broke up into small groups for the initial brainstorming sessions. We certainly took the lead there . . .'

By the penultimate rehearsal, however, the tables had turned. Martland and ELLSO, who have been meeting since October in the crypt of St George in the East church, were working on velocity ('De Snelheid' means speed), addressing the question 'How fast is music?' (Do high notes speed up music? Do long low ones slow it down? What about slow low ones?) Two weeks to go and time was running out. Martland, in flat-top and Arsenal T-shirt, had begun to radiate nervous energy - 'You've absolutely got to attack unanimously,' he kept saying, jabbing his finger. 'For God's sake, have confidence'.

'I had a terrible fear that I was intimidating them,' he said later. 'They're a reticent bunch and, coming from Liverpool, I can be quite sarcastic. I was also beginning to get very worried. They only have a certain standard they can technically reach; they want to do difficult things, but then they get into trouble. The problem with amateurs - God, that's true with professionals - is you have to find simple things that sound good. And we only had two minutes' worth . . . We can't stand on stage at the South Bank, I thought, with only two minutes of music]'

Over the following week, Martland did some major restructuring and, by a process of repetition and reversal, has stretched the piece (based on three chords) from two to eight minutes. He's even given it a name, About Time. ('Somebody from ELLSO wanted some Latin name - fugit something - but I wasn't having that, terribly pretentious'). 'It's come together and it works,' he says with relief.

'You think you're not going to get there,' says Barrie Hill, a cellist in his fifties. 'But somehow, always at the last minute, it comes together. And with a new piece like this, when you've been in since the beginning, you know - fingers crossed - that on stage, you'll be playing it as well as it's ever been played. And that's the point of music really, isn't it? Having fun playing with other people so that other people can hear.'

'About Time' begins at 6.45pm tonight at the Royal Festival Hall, London SE1, admission free. For details of the ELLSO contact the Membership Secretary, 27 Carson Road, London E16 4BD

(Photograph omitted)