Wye Valley Music has 145 members to date, of whom 38 are silver members (made up of 6 single memberships and 16 dual memberships), 105 are ordinary members (made up of 35 single memberships and 35 dual memberships) and 2 are honorary members. This is a slight increase on this date last year.
Membership fees (and accompanying donations) bring in a total income of £4080. It’s worth repeating what I said last year: this money is vital to us. It releases us from the constant pressure of needing to make a profit on every concert we put on. It supports the small but ongoing costs of our website, our accounting platform and our mailing list – our backroom systems. It allows us to take the occasional risk on a young musician or an obscure composer. It allows us to afford the occasional big-name performer. It’s what enables us to do what we do. So, to all our members, past and present, thank you.
I am stepping down as Secretary this year – I took over the role on a temporary basis when our previous Secretary retired – and I’ll be handing over the reins to Annette Hecht. I know that you’ll welcome her and support her as she finds her feet in Wye Valley Music, but I’m going to echo the cry that you’ll all have heard before: volunteer organisations like this are only as robust as their committee, so if you know anyone with a bit of time and energy to spare to help put on concerts like the one you’re about to hear, then please do get in touch with us. It could be as little as taking minutes for our meetings or helping to chase up adverts for our programmes. But, as the adverts say, every little helps.
