The past year. This past year was another good one for Wye Valley Music and for its three areas of focus:  our monthly concerts and our two community engagement programmes. Financially we are in a very strong position with solid concert income and grants and donations supporting our engagement activities as forecast. Audience numbers were strong for almost all concerts, though with a slight decline compared to last year, possibly because of greater competition as life has fully gone back to normal post Covid. Both engagement programmes performed as forecast.

Plans for 2024/2025. We have an exciting programme of concerts ahead booked up to almost the end of next year; Mind is continuing full tilt and Schools is conducting a status review before going into its seventh year. You will hear more details on all of these areas later.

The big news for the coming year, however, is that we have a brand-new candidate for Chair for Wye Valley Music--you will hear a little from Ian Lewis later on. We also have a new candidate for Secretary who will take over from Alice Hogge—Annette Hecht. 

But!! We are still looking for an assistant treasurer or a bookkeeper who can backstop our current financial system. So, if you know anybody at all or you yourself have some time and would be interested in helping us out with this, please let us know.

Every year we mention that we need help and here’s my plea again this year. It does seem to work, by the way—we were successful in attracting three new members to the committee this past year including our new candidates for chair and secretary!  but we need more people to help ensure that we keep going for another 10, 20 and hopefully 30 years. If you would like to join us to assist in any capacity, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thank you. Finally, I’d like to thank all the members of the committee for their generous help and support over the past year. Thanks as well go out to those on whose services we depend – St Briavels Church, Philip Kennedy our piano tuner, Jane Harvey, our Facebook and newspaper impresario, Caroline Jones our graphic designer and Wyastone our printers.

And last but not least a special thank you to all our members from me personally. I have really enjoyed getting to know so many of you during my time as chair. Your reactions, responses and thoughts after our concerts are always a pleasure to hear and have very often helped shape the direction we’ve gone with future concerts and events. I took over as Chair during the difficult covid years, and began by working together with the head of Hay on Wye’s Music Society to put on joint online music events for our members. As soon as we returned to live events, I started a drive to increase attendance numbers; this was very successful and we now have strong turnouts for our concerts. I also focused on ensuring that we generated a surplus annually and was able to grow our reserves to the level they are today, allowing us to attract ever higher quality musicians and to meet the rising costs of putting on concerts. I also brought on four new committee members, including a new secretary, dedicated IT support, and now a new chair. I led and expanded our Schools programme and supported the launch of the Music in Mind Programme.

Running this wonderful, long-standing and ever-changing music society has been an absolute joy and I’m pleased to be leaving it in such solid shape. Ian has great experience with arts organisations and will continue to lead Wye Valley music in exciting directions.

Thank you all very much—
Corinna Arnold 
Chair
15th October 2024