Tiny tortoise makes orchestra debut! 🐢

Shellebrating a legend! 🐢

The idea came from journalist Claire Jackson, who was covering the Aldeburgh festival. While writing the late pianist Alfred Brendel’s obituary two weeks earlier, she had remembered his story about once taking a baby tortoise into the Musikverein concert hall in Vienna, just because he found it funny.

Claire, who often travels with her own five-year-old tortoise (named Trot after Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot), suggested a playful tribute to Brendel. With the festival’s blessing, Trot was ushered on stage while the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra was rehearsing Glière’s ‘Zaporozhy Cossacks’.