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Annual Report
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| ANNUAL REPORT PRESENTED BY COLIN WALLER, AT THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING ON WEDNESDAY, 31st OCTOBER 2007 Ladies and Gentlemen It has been a fairly active first year of my Chairmanship. With no previous experience of the administration of the Choir I had much to learn, and without the support of a very active Committee it would have been impossible. I thank them most sincerely for their help and industry. Of course, without the leadership of our Musical Director, Jonathan, most ably supported by our accompanist, Richard Barnes, we would not reach the high standards that we regularly achieve. We owe them a great deal of thanks for their professional support. This AGM covers the 2006/07 season, ended on 31st. July 2007, during which time we held four concerts. 1. November 2006 Maria Theresa Mass (Haydn):Requiem (Durufle) 2. December 2006 Carols at St. Paul’s 3. March 2007 St. Matthew Passion (Bach) 4. July 2007 German Requiem (Brahms) From my point of view, these were all successful performances, but Jonathan may well wish to comment more fully on the musical content. From a financial point of view, the year ended just ahead of break-even, with a surplus of income over expenditure of £410. Richard will give more details I’m sure. However, ticket sales remain our financial life-blood. Without them our ability to sing together at a high level of attainment would be prohibitively expensive for members of the Choir. We are experimenting with differential ticket pricing for popular works and other less well known works in an effort to encourage more people to attend the latter. However, our main source of ticket sales is you, our Choir Members. Please keep up the good work in this area. I believe that we provide pleasure to our supporters as well as ourselves. Choir membership is now 135. We have lost a few longer serving members but I am delighted to welcome a goodly number of new members into our midst. Please take any opportunity you can to receive them warmly. We need a continuing input of new voices. We owe a great debt of gratitude to John Beck for his work in selling the CD. To date we have made profits of nearly £3000, and there are only about 150 copies remaining in the hands of the supplier. We have the opportunity to buy these for just under £600, and when sold they will produce a further £900 of profit. I shall be discussing this proposal with the Committee in five days' time. I must also discuss with Jonathan if there is a case for making a second recording. The Chichester Singers will not be performing in the 2008 Chichester Festivities. Despite protracted negotiations and personal visits by Jonathan and myself to the Administrators, we have been unable to secure a place in the programme. Our preference is for a performance on a Saturday during the Festivities, because this is best suited to accommodate rehearsals during the day for both singers and orchestra. Sundays are less attractive to us because of the logistics around church services, and the number of hours that professional orchestras are prepared to set aside for any given fee. However, we could (and have) performed on Sundays but, for 2008, the Festivities Committee has engaged the services of another choir for the middle Saturday and it is felt by them that another major choral work in close proximity is not a good idea for programming reasons. However, all is not lost and we have a firm offer from the Festivities to perform on Saturday, 4th. July 2009 and, in the meantime, for 2008 we are arranging our own concert in the Cathedral on Saturday, 21st June, when we shall perform Elgar’s ‘The Dream of Gerontius’. It will be fantastic, and we must fill the Cathedral, if only to prove that the Festivities cannot do without us! I now have the pleasant task of thanking the retiring members of the Committee for their excellent efforts over the past three years: · Kirsty Bates, for administering the Patrons and Mailing lists · Wendy Bray as Concert Manager and Membership Secretary · Claire Murphy for selling tickets and distributing publicity material, and · Jacinta Neal as Social Secretary. There is one other person that I would particularly like to thank for his quiet but ever present support. He organises the seating for us every week, and more recently has made parking available to us when the school has had a plethora of visitors who would otherwise have taken our parking spots: · Maurice Cook Thank you Colin Waller
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