On Friday, March 11, the Oxford Philomusica goes east. Not quite as far as Singapore or Tokyo, but to Aylesbury, where the orchestra will give its first concert in the town’s new Waterside Theatre.

“We’re extremely excited to be appointed Orchestra in Association at the Waterside, so we’re the resident orchestra,” the Philomusica’s founder and music director Marios Papadopoulos told me. “Our involvement extends beyond the concert platform; we’re planning some exciting educational activity — next week’s concert will be preceded by a workshop.”

Although this is the Philomusica’s first concert at the Waterside, it’s not their first visit, Papadopoulos explained.

“We were invited to do the acoustic testing. So we went there last August, all dressed in hard hats. We spent two whole days playing pieces over and over again while engineers measured the sound. It’s a state of the art theatre, and the acoustics can be controlled electronically, so there’s a lot of flexibility there. That’s very exciting.

“It’s part of an expansion plan for the orchestra. What we’re now trying to do is to duplicate every programme we play in Oxford somewhere else. That means we can have more rehearsal time, so I hope, in the years to come, the orchestra will sound better as a result. In future, we intend to come back to Oxford with a programme that we’ve been playing on consecutive days elsewhere, culminating in a performance at the Sheldonian.”

Besides taking the Oxford name to Swindon, and now Aylesbury, Papadopoulos has further expansion plans: “Hopefully, in the next year or so we will expand as far west as Bath. I feel that Bath is a Roman city, and Oxford still speaks Latin, so it should fit like a glove!”

At Aylesbury, the Philomusica play Brahms’s Violin Concerto (soloist Jennifer Pike) and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Tickets: 0844 871 7607 or www.ambassadortickets.com/aylesbury.