hampshire guitar orchestra newsletter

This is a web-archive of the Newsletter we emailed to our subscribers in June 2007

The passage of time may mean that some links to external sites are out of date or broken

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.

CONCERT NEWS

We were over in Winchester in May, playing for BRPS - that's the British Retinitis Pigmentosa Society - at a lovely venue in the heart of the city, and raising £170 in the process. We'll be honest - we chatted by email and phone to the organiser on several occasions, and when we first met him it was a bit of a shock to find a young chap with a white stick, steadily losing his vision month by month... There's the chance of a cure right round the corner and the BRPS is not only involved in research, but in support of those affected.

WHAT'S COMING UP?

This coming weekend, we're playing in Southsea on June 9th, for the Street Pastors scheme, providing support for young people, out on the streets.

The local Portsmouth News (our daily paper) has had quite a lot of publicity about this scheme which is going live in a few weeks time. The 29 Pastors will be offering practical help and advice to the young, particularly those sleeping rough or pouring out of the pubs and clubs in the small hours.

The concert is just a few days away, so it's tickets on the door now, but you'll find travel details on our website here...come early for a good seat - there have been a lot of tickets sold in advance...

We're playing in Cambridge on June 23rd, and back in Havant on July 7th

And we've got 6 more lined up for after the summer, including the prospect of a slot at The Portsmouth Guildhall and an audience of 1500.

You can always get an up-to-date list on our concerts page

RECRUITMENT NEWS

Over the summer we're losing one of our players and that means we are hoping to be able to welcome another guitarist into our ranks - someone who likes that heady blend of commitment and concert! Fancy having a go on one of our different sizes of guitar? Well, you might just be the person we need to join our team - 12 concerts a year is great fun, believe you me!

Are you just a learner? Well, tell your teacher - we have an opportunity for the right person here which is pretty much unique.

REPERTOIRE

We're adding some new pieces to our repertoire, so if you've heard us before, we can promise you three new items. We premiere two of them on June 9th, and you couldn't find two pieces more different!

Our pieces are normally arranged in about 6-7 parts, and usually feature all four different sizes of guitar, so if you've not heard us, it's a sound quite unlike massed classical guitars.

WEBSITE NEWS

Our website is busy again - we're serving well over 40,000 pages every month. We've added a magic metronome to our instruction pages - we know that our site is visited by 80 countries worldwide and only yesterday we were chatting with a guy from Oklahoma who was asking about unusual tunings.

We've added details of our November 1st concert in Park Place Pastoral Centre Wickham - a real country mansion with a real charitable side to it - read more on our website...

PUBLICITY

For the benefit of our new subscribers, let us repeat what we said last time...

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!
You will often fund us in our local Evening Paper, or being advertised on Radio Solent, but word of mouth is one of the best ways we know to swell the audience size and raise more money for charity. If you can ever place a poster or two for us, mail us and we'll send an electronic copy over.