hampshire guitar orchestra newsletter

This is a web-archive of the Newsletter we emailed to our subscribers in March 2006

The passage of time may mean that some links to external sites are out of date or broken

ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER

As always, this free newsletter is a small-scale plain-text production to keep you in touch with what's happening in hago - we always include links into our main website where you can read more, see photos and explore still further, so do click when you see a link...

Welcome to the many people who subscribed in January - we can only assume it's your New Year's Resolution, and we'll help you keep it.

CONCERT NEWS

We're a bit late sending this newsletter out, and that's because one of our Concert Jigsaw pieces only dropped into place this time last night!
So let us tell you what's coming up, and also what *might* also be coming along.

On March 11th, we're playing in Cosham at St Philip's Church - Sir Ninian Comper's last massive Church construction. We're raising money to make the facilities wheelchair accessible, and we're sharing the concert with some other young local talent. No, let's rephrase that. Some other local talent, who happen to be young. It implied we were young too....

Tickets are only £4, so they're looking for a big audience

On May 13th, we head back to Chichester and we not only team up with West Sussex Guitar Club, but one of the UK's finest young professionals, Amanda Cook, is coming to play a set too.

On July 8th, we return to Portsmouth with our good friends Cambridge Guitar Orchestra for our annual home-and-away shared concert. We're feeding and watering CGO again, and it's a great time to renew acquaintances. Come and hear 5 different sorts of classical guitar!

Not content with that, we're looking at concerts further afield as well - more news at www.hago.org.uk/concerts as soon as we know - we have another 4 in planning at the moment...

WEBSITE NEWS

Well - here's a funny thing! www.hago.org.uk is one of the finalists in the Hantsweb Web Awards competition - already we've beaten about 150 other entrants and we're in the final three in the Special Interest category.
Visit www.hants.gov.uk/hantswebawards for more detail - they are announcing the finalists next week, so we'll find out whether we're competing with www.mouthulcers.org, a mail-order sausage supplier, or one of the other 150 in our category!

For those who aren't content without a statistic to mull over, let's tell you that in 2005 we served a third of a million pages on our website...

RECRUITMENT NEWS

We're the biggest we've ever been - 14 players - and we have an alto just looking for a Grade 7+ player to help grow our ranks further - www.hago.org.uk/join
We've been auditioning players recently and our repertoire and commitment are making players sit up and ask about joining. And that's great news.

REPERTOIRE NEWS

We're not people to sit on laurels when we can sit on chairs and play, and our Musical Director has been busy listening to yet more music that you won't normally hear on guitar, and then crafting it to fit the hago guitars. Late last year we added Katie Melua to our repertoire, and we have another new piece we're working up right now. So whether it's classical, chart hits, reggae, South American, TV theme or more, we'll tackle it in the way that only different sizes of guitar makes possible. If you last heard us a year ago, come and hear our new repertoire - we think you'll approve.

CHARITY NEWS

The amount we've raised for local charities has blasted through the £25,000 mark and it's still going up. Most of our concerts are for charity, so do come if you can.

PUBLICITY

Listen out for us on Radio Solent - our concerts are being advertised there.
As a non-profit making orchestra, many of whose concerts are for charity, we are always on the look-out for chances to raise public awareness of what we do, preferably at no cost, of course. If you are aware of opportunities to publicise what we do, please reply to this newsletter and send us details - thanks!