Last September, the composer Ian McQueen informed the music classes of St Patrick's High School, Coatbridge, that they would be performing their own compositions in Airdrie Town Hall in eight weeks' time. The project is typical of the outreach work being done by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, inspired by its Associate Conductor and Composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

McQueen unfolds the story of the children's progress, and the Lanarkshire Youth Orchestra's work on his own specially commissioned piece, Fanfares and Nocturnes, as they prepared for the big event.