hampshire guitar orchestra newsletter

This is a web-archive of the Newsletter we emailed to our subscribers in July 2005

The passage of time may mean that some links to external sites are out of date or broken

CONCERT NEWS

It was a very sombre evening that saw our Bruce Paine concert unfurl on July 7th - the day of the London atrocities.

We felt it appropriate to mention the incident, and to change the dedication on our final item - Schindler's List - from being a celebration of the passage of 60 years since the Holocaust into a sobering reminder that man's inhumanity still carries on, even now.

Between the pauses for reflection at the start and finish, we packed a massively varied evening of music.

St Agatha's is a wonderful venue but it can be a little too large for solo classical guitar. It was with a little trepidation that we hired in some sound reinforcement, but by using equipment costing many thousands of pounds, the reinforcement was neutral and almost undetectable, yet helping the guitars carry.

St Agatha's has a habit of blurring speech, but we in hago sat right at the very back, and could hear the music beautifully when Bruce played.

If you missed the evening (and we had several people caught in London), you can sample just a touch of it by watching a video of that final item we just mentioned.

The video has CD quality sound, and is a 10 megabyte download, meaning that on broadband it takes about a minute, but on dial-up it's about 45 minutes (so fetch it at weekends, when the phone is at its cheapest!).

This is a new venture for us, but the piece of music, the occasion, the circling of the globe and the terrible news from London all combined to give what I hope you'll find is a very touching and very special performance.
View the Schindler's List video here.

We've been blessed with the assistance of Louise Harbert who has come to every concert to play flute for us and get us out of the crater that was left when hago's guitarist/flautist had to drop out with a shoulder injury. To turn up to every concert and play just that one piece has been more than we could ask for, and you can rest assured that Louise was given a present at the St Agatha's concert for all the hard work she's done for us.

The arrangement is pretty faithful to the original orchestration, and the intimacy that a guitar gives, compared to orchestral strings, is very apparent in the sound.

Bruce sold out completely of his latest CD, and there are not currently any copies at his UK stockist.
However, his previous CD, "Second Recital for guitar by Bruce Paine" contains 5 or so of the pieces he played, and you can order copies at guitarcds.net, which is based in Brighton, close to the home of hago!

A quick headcount showed that we had over 150 people at the concert, and though we couldn't get even one local guitar teacher to support us (we sent out 28 complimentary tickets, and *no-one* came!), we have taken great pride in not only getting one of the largest audiences around, but the vast majority had never been to a guitar concert before. Not only that, but a lot of them said that it was hugely more enjoyable than they had ever dreamed possible.
We've always made "outreach" a high priority, and we're really delighted that we've now introduced solo guitar and guitar orchestra to many new "converts" !
The whole event was recorded too, and we are hoping to put up some new soundclips as soon as the mastering of the recording is done.

DIARY

August 21st sees us at Bognor Regis - part of the Birdman of Bognor event! 11:30am on the pier. More details as soon as we get them.
We have a booking at Petersfield on November 12th, and we'll be finalising our Christmas events in August - more news soon!

WEBSITE NEWS

www.hago.org.uk continues to attract far more visitors than we ever expected, but summer holidays and a fairly punishing concert schedule have meant that we've taken a break on updating the site for the moment. But do click on www.hago.org.uk/news/ to find out which new pages we've added. You'll find, in particular, a number of photos of our concert on July 7th.

RECRUITMENT NEWS

Each month, we receive more enquiries about joining. Are you interested? Then contact us - we love welcoming new players, Grade 4 and up - we have a place for YOU if you are between Grade 4 and Diploma level and enjoy being in a really successful team!
Now is *the* time to make contact, as we're currently "resting" and there's plenty of time before our next formal concert.

GUITAR NEWS

Our second Contrabass that we mentioned last newsletter is up and running and our sound is, we reckon, all the better for it! Our MD visited the shop that supplied us (Classical Guitar Centre, Birmingham - an excellent shop) and was given the chance to play the owner's 180-year old Panormo guitar with an unusually deep body and a volume that, from such a tiny guitar, was nothing less than stunning, with exquisite tone and sustain and a gently radiused fingerboard that made playing so easy. What a treat!

FOR OVERSEAS VISITORS

Have you visited our MD's Hampshire photo gallery? Come and see our pictures from the country of Hants, taken throughout the year.
We'll be adding another photo or two over this weekend, including one of the interior of Idsworth Church, showing wall paintings from almost a thousand years ago!

FOR GUITARISTS

If you live too far away to come to one of our Concerts, you might be interested in our Guitar FAQS where you'll learn a bit more about our guitars, and pick up some hints and tips too.