hago newsletter 14th January 2007
In this section...
Hampshire Guitar Orchestra » Concerts » Mailing List » 14th January 2007
 |
This is a web-archive of the Newsletter we emailed to our subscribers in January 2007
|
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
This free newsletter is a small-scale 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 have subscribed since last issue - here's where you find out what we're up to.
And an apology if some of you didn't hear straight away when you filled in the webform
on the hago website.
Here's why...
ANTIPODEAN ADVENTURES
The hago Newsletter is all done by hand to minimise our costs, and just sometimes our Musical Director isn't around to push the buttons when new subscribers join. This Christmas was a case in point. Just 12 hours after our concert on December 14th (more in a moment), he was on the way to the airport for a 26-hour flight to New Zealand, where he met Bruce Paine, one of Kiwiland's finest guitarists, for a shared working holiday which included a concert at historic Alberton - the first house in the Mount Albert district of Auckland and now a national heritage museum. At the time of writing there are brief details here on Bruce Paine's website. Photos and soundclips are expected later. In true manic style, our MD was back teaching less than 8 hours after arriving home, in a late night class at Farlington.
Our MD is now wondering how to organise a hago tour of New Zealand - it's not cheap to buy 16 return tickets!
CONCERT NEWS
Concerts is what we're about - here's what's been happening...
Since our last Newsletter, we played a massive concert at Southwick on November 30th - a sell-out that raised £1000 for The Rowans Hospice.
Two days later, we were raising funds for Crisis at Christmas at North End, Portsmouth.
And a fortnight later we played a short and particularly boisterous singalong session at Hale Court Sheltered accommodation.
You can see a selection of photos in our 2006 gallery...
WHAT'S COMING UP?
If you haven't heard us, why not drop along to a future concert?
As seems to be tradition in hago, we suddenly get dates flying at us!
We're playing in Emsworth on March 16th in aid of "Hope and Homes for Children"
We're pretty sure we're playing in Winchester on May 11th in aid of Retinitis Pigmentosa
We're playing in Cambridge on June 23rd
We're playing at a Nunnery in November (no really we are!)
And we have two more possibles to fit around those... We hope for more news in our next Newsletter at the beginning of March, but you can always get an up-to-date list on our concerts page
WEBSITE NEWS
Our website attracts visitors from over 80 countries, and we can see from the logs that our site is being mentioned in several discussion forums across the globe - our articles on our different sizes of guitar are attracting a lot of interest. We also attract the interest of those who really ought to know better. In the last week we've had a woman asking if one can put short-length nylon "alto" strings onto a full-length steel-string guitar. It's akin to (and about as useful as) trying to fit a bicycle tyre onto a tractor wheel... And someone has asked us why his brand new 5-string acoustic bass guitar isn't tuned like an electric guitar (well, being a different instrument and having a different number of strings is a start!). We do our best to provide an unpaid nanny-service to such people, but we'd rather be playing concerts than sending emails!
RECRUITMENT NEWS
We've a full complement of players, and next time you come to a concert, you'll hear a bigger than ever sound.
CHARITY NEWS - another £2000 since last NEWSLETTER
The amount we've raised for local charities has now reached £29,400 - thank you for helping us in our outreach and charitable works.
HAVANT VENUES
We've been contacted to ask if we are interested in supporting a bid to build a 500-seater concert Hall in Havant. Obviously we'd be interested in using it ourselves if it was a cost-effective
venue for our charity concerts, so we asked what the Hire Charges were likely to be in their Business Plan. We never got even so much as an acknowledgement back...
More news when we get it!
PUBLICITY
As a not-for-profit orchestra, with many concerts 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!