This is the newsletter that was sent to members in June. It contains details of the rest of the summer programme, and prospects for next year.
Dear Member,
I do hope you enjoyed the Rodolfus Choir’s concert back in April. We have received such strong positive feedback from members of the audience that we will invite them back at the earliest possible opportunity. Sadly, I missed the concert because of the Volcanic ash cloud, so I hope they will return soon!
July sees the International Youth Arts Festival in Kingston (www.iyafestival.org.uk), featuring over 100 events both theatrical and musical. You may be interested, in particular, by the concert given by Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra in the Rose Theatre on Sunday 11
th July at 7.30 pm, with tickets priced from £4.50 - £10. Tickets for this are available direct from the Rose Theatre or online from the Festival’s website.
As part of the Festival, Thames Concerts is promoting a concert given by the Thames Youth Orchestra, with whom we are about to go into partnership as part of our outreach programme. This will take place in Kingston Parish Church on Saturday 17
th July at 7.30 pm, preceded by a pre-performance talk as ever, and features a great American-themed programme. The concert starts with Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, so called because of its assimilation of Cuban rhythms and a dazzling array of percussion instruments. This is followed by Patrick Milne (a 17-year old student at Tiffin School, and prize winner at the Royal College of Music) performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, heavily influenced by Jazz and written by the composer in 1931 immediately after his piano-playing tour of the USA. Patrick is an astonishingly gifted young musician about whom we can expect to hear a lot in the future – he has a phenomenal technique, but also a musical and emotional maturity well beyond his years. The popular (and challenging) Symphonic Dances from Bernstein’s West Side Story complete the programme.
Tickets for these concert are £10 for adults and £5 for children and students; in addition, we have a family ticket of 2 adults and 2 children available for £20. The TYO’s Summer Concert last year saw extra chairs having to be found, so it would be good idea to get there early! In particular, this would be an ideal concert for you to introduce any friends, family and younger children to orchestral music – all of the music in the concert will be introduced before it is played, and we very much hope that many "newcomers" will get hooked on classical music through it. That said, it’s also a great concert for us "old-timers"!
Looking into the Autumn and the forthcoming season, most of the £25 tickets for the concert given by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge on Sunday 26
th September, have been sold now, and there are only a handful of £20 tickets remaining – if you know of anyone who would like a reserved ticket for this, please get in touch with Nicolette as soon as possible. The programme is wonderful, and will shortly be published on the Thames Concerts website.
There will be a 2011 season, and this will be published at the time of the King’s concert. To make this happen, we are developing partnerships with a number of organisations – if you have any leads that you think might help, please let us know of them and we will follow them up.
We will be sending out a further newsletter at some stage over the Summer to keep you in the picture. In the meantime, thank you ever so much for your support – these are difficult times financially, and we rely on the generosity of individual donations. As we move to get the organisation on a firm financial footing and into stability, your help is vital, and very much appreciated. We all look forward to seeing you again on 17
