It performs compositions which range from single-instrument solos and voice-and-guitar duos up to full chamber-orchestra-and-choir pieces (and all points in between, including assorted trios, quartets, quintets etc.).

[1] Various critics have also made comparisons to the music of rock/classical/crossover musicians such as Simon Jeffes' Penguin Café Orchestra, Sean O'Hagan's High Llamas, Frank Zappa, Clogs, Sufjan Stevens, Max Richter, Nick Drake, Virginia Astley, Kate St John and Peter Warlock.

Members of NSRO for the first concert included the Fortnams, percussionist Hugh Wilkinson, cellist/composer Harry Escott and organist/composer James Larcombe (of Stars in Battledress), all of whom would continue in the ensemble long-term.

While the instrumentalists were mostly drawn from the classical world, the vocal chorus contained former Shrubbies concert-mates and collaborators from the Fortnams' time on the London art rock circuit.

Behold the eleven-piece chamber orchestra beneath the chandeliers of Bush Hall, and you realise that Craig Fortnam, their leader and chief composer, is utterly serious in his quest for accessible, intelligent, non-trivial music….

What makes the NSRO special is Fortnam's gift for orchestration, the deft and original way he puts deceptively simple materials in the hands of sophisticated performers.

It contained a re-recorded version of "The Flower", plus two more Tennyson settings ("The Lintwhite" and "Move Eastward Happy Earth") and three instrumental pieces ("Music For Two Clarinets And Piano", "Organ Miniature No.

On 31 July 2006 the North Sea Radio Orchestra performed at the Spitz, East London at a Music Orbit evening (a spin-off of the iF Festival) alongside NEM and Makeshift.

This concert received a five-star review in the Daily Telegraph which nominated the "superbly disciplined chamber ensemble" as "the kind of deserving enterprise the BBC should really be throwing money at," and singled out praise for Sharon Fortnam's voice as possessing "dazzling, pre-industrial clarity.

If I met an extra-terrestrial and wanted to communicate the concept of Englishness quickly and easily, I could do a lot worse than to play them the music of the North Sea Radio Orchestra.

Tracks included Fortnam's settings of Thomas Hardy's "Shelley's Skylark", Yeats' "He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes" and "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", plus new instrumental "Kingstanding" and the part-instrumental/part-choral "Chimes".

Word Magazine called it "a beautiful debut.... unreservedly recommended," while Leeds Guide praised "a style of songwriting and a lyricism (nostalgic, pastoral, quaint) which is peculiarly English and suddenly, in their hands, timeless" and their reviewer dubbed the recording "one of the best albums, whatever the genre, that I have heard this year."

Playlouder.com claimed that "North Sea Radio Orchestra splash colour into every corner of the speakers with a regal splendour and effervescent celebration of God, Nature or whatever it is you may wish to call it.

Foggy Notions called it "an everchanging trip, blooming with melody and twinkling beauty from start to finish," while Subba Cultcha commented that the ensemble's music was "stepping easily between genres, sometimes classical, sometimes indie; inspired and compelling and often magical, like the soundtrack to a film that hasn't been made yet.

"[10] A review in Boomkat (while drawing attention to the NSRO's "idiosyncratic bombast", "cartoonishly baroque melodies" and "unbridled eccentricity") praised the orchestra's "considerable performance skills and elegant arrangements", and concluded that the album was "a fairly surreal experience all round.

In December 2007 the NSRO version of the hymn "O Come O Come Emanuel" appeared on the compilation album The Arctic Circle Presents: That Fuzzy Feeling ( a collection of Christmas songs).

The NSRO played live to promote the album at a concert at the Union Chapel, London on 5 December 2007 (alongside Ellis Island Sound, Mara Carlyle, David Julyan and The Dollboy Windpipe Arkestra).

During the first half of the year they made an appearance at the Jacqueline Du Pre Music Rooms in Oxford in January 2008, and performed at the Friends Meeting House, Brighton on 16 March 2008 supported by Crayola Lectern.

But in some ways it can't help feeling like a retreat… Certainly there are moments of beauty, but ultimately it's like stepping back into an alternate, pre-war England where rock'n’roll – not to mention mass industrialisation and immigration – never happened.

"[14] Notorious underground music commentator Everett True was considerably more scornful in his Hugs And Kisses blog (reprinted in The Village Voice), castigating the band for "po-faced snobbery" and "baroque warbling" and comparing them unfavourably to their more post-rock inclined support act: “Crayola Lectern tick the same high musicality boxes as the band that followed, sure: but possess one crucial factor that the North Sea Radio Malarkey just don’t, just don’t get.

Organ, violins, clarinet, bassoon and oboe feature heavily alongside acoustic guitar, drum, percussion and choral parts, conjuring up images of royal court musicians… (The album) straddles the less crowded end of 60s folk and revives traditional chamber music, managing to sound timeless and refreshing rather than hopelessly outdated.

"[22] Organ lavishly praised the album, saying that "North Sea Radio Orchestra are blossoming in a rather fine way now with their inviting mix of delicate English prog and 20th century classical pastoral folk.

One direction; nice, simple, sitting in a sunny field, female-voiced acoustic folk, the other towards a rarer thing, this fusion of English medieval progressive classical, chamber orchestral music, via Vaughan Williams, Cardiacs, Vernon Elliott, Henry Cow.

Always more than just decorating modern music with classical instrumentation, at its core a real orchestra, this is something that's both timeless and enchantingly beautiful – a very fine, very enjoyable rather magical album.

"[23] Following the release of Birds, NSRO appearances and activity became rarer, partly due to Craig Fortnam's concentration on a smaller-scale project called Arch Garrison, the live line-up of which also featured James Larcombe.

On 22 October they played at the Union Chapel, London, as part of the Marginalise Concert Series organised by the Arctic Circle label, performing the music of one of their leading influences, Vernon Elliot (arranged by Craig Fortnam and fellow composer Laura Rossi).

Firstly, the album would have a "darker, less pastoral sound" with new influences including Krautrock and experimental indie band Deerhoof (and with more emphasis on synthesizer and percussion than previously).

These were performed later in 2017 in Lyon as the Folly Bololey - Songs from Robert Wyatt's "Rock Bottom" concert featuring Greaves, the NSRO and Italian singer Annie Barbazza.

Marchini subsequently produced the critically acclaimed album version of Folly Bololey, recorded live during the Musiche Nuove a Piacenza Festival in November 2018 and eventually released in 2019, with liner notes written by Robert Wyatt and Jonathan Coe.

Craig Fortnam noted that his preceding work on Folly Bololey had informed the approach of Dronne by teaching him how to "(tread) the fine line between spontaneity and composition whilst maintaining a sense of freedom within the original arrangements."