The orchestra performed its first live show at Glastonbury Abbey in July 2012 (which was also the subject of a Channel 4 documentary), and received international attention when it played alongside Coldplay during the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London in September 2012.

[3] The Paraorchestra made its first public appearance on 1 July 2012 during Hazlewood's music festival "Orchestra in a Field" at Glastonbury Abbey; the performance included its versions of "Greensleeves" and Maurice Ravel's Boléro.

[3] On 3 December 2012, coinciding with the United Nations' International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the British Paraorchestra released a cover of "True Colors" as a charity single, in a campaign to be Christmas number one.

[3] Its founder members in 2012 included Nicholas McCarthy, a one-handed pianist who was a recent graduate from the Royal College of Music, Clarence Adoo, a former jazz trumpet player who was paralysed below the shoulders after a car accident in 1995 (and who played an instrument known as "Headspace", which is controlled by breath and head motions, developed for him by Rolf Gehlhaar), Gemma Lunt, a viola player who uses a wheelchair and Lyn Levett, who uses a Macintosh to play what Hazlewood feels is "dizzyingly creative" electronic music.

[1] Blind members of the Paraorchestra in 2012 included pianist and violinist Abi Baker, James Risdon on recorder, Matthew Wadsworth on the lute, violist Takashi Kikuchi, and multi-instrumentalists Baluji Shrivastav and Ziad Sinno.