hago newsletter 19th December 2007
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Hampshire Guitar Orchestra » Concerts » Mailing List » 19th December 2007
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This is a web-archive of the Newsletter we emailed to our subscribers in December 2007
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ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
Season's Greetings from hago to all of our newsletter subscribers.
Everything's run on a shoe-string here in hago, but that doesn't mean we can't be as generous with our wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year as we've been able to be in our support for local charities this year.
Allow us to get in a reminiscent mood and share with you some of our special memories of 2007…
With eleven concerts, this was our most remarkable year in many respects, not only our largest audience ever (over 1000 at Portsmouth Guildhall) but our largest fundraising total ever (over £4200 raised for local charities). Two of our recent concerts were sell-outs - another increase over last year.
But a lot has happened behind the scenes too.
Five players bought new guitars in 2007, and our sound now is louder and stronger than ever before. We've fitted a new design of Tornavoz to our bass instruments - read about our prototype here. The Tornavoz makes the body behave like it is bigger, so the bass sounds rounder and deeper. Now don't laugh, but we’re going to let you into a little secret - the raw material for our new ones begins life as a flowerpot and a draught excluder. For about a pound each, we've got a bigger improvement in our deep bass than spending £3000 on new guitars - and believe me, we began by trying the expensive guitars! So all in all, it's like 8 new guitars have arrived.
New guitars deserve new music, and we've added four new pieces to our repertoire, together with some warm-up pieces just to play before the concerts. We have another couple of new pieces in planning at the moment, so if you haven't heard us for a little while, we're sure you'll notice the difference.
What have we got lined up for 2008 to top that?
Well, already we've got eleven concerts booked - exactly the same as this year, and even as we speak, we're looking at one or two events for March/April 2009.
A couple of weeks ago, we launched our (for want of a better title) Youth Scheme. We're offering talented 16-21 year olds a chance to share the hard work and the buzz that is hago in concert season. We're committed to bringing "guitar" out into the community, and we're committed to showing just what an amateur ensemble can achieve. It makes good sense for us to further promote both these ideas with placements for youngsters who can experience first hand what playing guitar "for real" is all about. Teachers and youngsters amongst you can read more here…
We also most definitely welcome enquires from adult players who can help us strengthen our team - our music isn't hard, but players need at least Grade 5 ability so that they can get up to speed quickly, and be confident in phrasing and up-the-neck fingering. Do "reply" to this email if you're interested in coming to a rehearsal and sitting in to learn more.
Behind the scenes we have a stronger committee and some quite detailed future plans - we think we've found our niche - a unique sound, a unique repertoire and a unique concept in fundraising. We're going to be recharging our batteries so that we can stride forward in 2008.
On behalf of everyone in hago - that's Derek, Kathryn, Kate, Gill, Viv, Heather, Lisa, Rich, Avril, Tracy, Caroline, Philip, Chris and Jon - have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - we hope to see you when our concert season starts up again on March 8th 2008!