Robert Bridge looks forward to the new season & new sponsors

As the years have passed attendance has grown and nowadays audience numbers are good, often amazing, and in the last few years a season of concerts raises between £4000 and £5000 whereas the costs of the concerts come in at about £1400. So the maths speaks for itself: the concerts are healthy enough to fund themselves. And of course, inevitably, most sponsors have wanted to determine the choice of charity, which is understandable, but means that the musicians who, I think it is fair to say do the most work and are paid nothing, rarely have the fun of nominating the charity and sometimes find themselves supporting a charity that they have little connection with.

So this year I'd like to say a really huge thank you to all of you who have helped to fund the concerts over the last couple of years but this year I shan't be asking you to help out and instead returning the choice of charity to the performers - indeed at least half of the concerts this year have already had charities nominated by the performers.

However, before you close your chequebooks or log out of your internet banking I am offering you instead the opportunity to help fund the performers themselves. They take it on the chin that they play for nothing but some of them rack up significant travel expenses for rehearsals and the performance and turn down other work in order to make themselves available.

Historically I share out any unopened wine bottles at the end of the evening, buy them sandwiches and juice out of my own pocket and occasionally surreptitiously dip into the donations to pay for their petrol. I have to say that most of them feel a bit embarrassed about this, feel that it's not quite the spirit of the occasion and go away empty-handed. I think it would be fantastic to create a small fund that could be used to make sure that they are not out of pocket and perhaps go away with a bottle of wine, a bunch of flowers, some small token of appreciation.

There are going to be about 20 performers involved this year and if you would like to contribute something, however small, to a performers' kitty please let me know and I'll send you the bank details for the Knitting concert account or my address.

Meanwhile, for your diaries, the dates this year are
January 26th
February 23rd
March 16th (not March 23rd as advertised in the current Parish Magazine)
April 27th
May 25th
June 29th

As ever all concerts are at All Saints Church, Putney and start at 7pm. Click here to find out what a knitting concert is.

Robert Bridge
robertdbridge@yahoo.co.uk

January 10, 2014