Dear All
Stunning… beautiful… packed…. excellent… superb…. a great night out…exquisite performance…sociable….vibrant…. fun…. relaxing… enjoyable…. great…. you're all so talented…
I could go on! These are just some of the comments I’ve heard following the very successful Sinfonia concert on Saturday.
It was a fabulous concert with record audience numbers with a queue outside beforehand and the middle section of the balcony almost full! The high quality of the performance was evident and commented on by many in the audience, Paul Harris and Ian Smith! Congratulations to everyone who played.
Many thanks to those who helped in the lead up, on the day, sold tickets, fixed players, set up chairs, tidied up, welcomed people, brought in programmes… I’d like to particularly thank members of Sinfonia who went the extra mile to sell more tickets - it made such a difference! We think we had 181 people in audience. On a sunny May BH weekend, that is particularly amazing.
As I always say, they come to see you. Thank you!
A special shout out to a few BSO players who joined Sinfonia for the first time! Congratulations and I hope you enjoyed it! For our 3 young players: Amelie, Olivia and Toby - huge well done and thank you for the work you put in. I know you did extra practice, had lessons on it with your teachers and worked hard to get the bowing in. You were exemplary and played so well.
Well done to our fabulous Front of House Team: Louise, Jane, Richard and our BOS Youth Ambassadors, Nelly and Hannah. Thanks to Rupert for manning our wonderful Box Office within the orchestra at rehearsals. Brilliant work.
Thanks to Alex, all the Section Leaders and Fixers and Committee members for their hard work in organising players, thanks to Dave and Julia for moving timps, on the day setting up and clearing away, those stepping in to help in lots of key ways. Everybody plays such an important role.
Finally, a massive thanks to Ian for his vision and planning of the concert. You captured our imaginations, ran fun and effective rehearsals and made the performance accessible and enjoyable for all! Thank you, Ian.
Message from Ian:
Dear Sinfonia players
Thank you all so much for such an excellent concert on Saturday. The audience hugely enjoyed the whole concert, not only the rather quirky concerto but also your magnificent playing of the Symphony. The performance was undoubtedly the best we had played the symphony. Thank you all for all your hard work, and for working at selling so many tickets. The size of the audience was very pleasing indeed. One audience member confided in me that they “enjoyed the concert more than the Philharmonia last Tuesday”, so very well done!
Ian Smith
Looking forward to the next Sinfonia outings in June!
An important finance update:
Something that new Members comment on frequently is the sense of community they see within our orchestras and I’m so proud of that. It’s what makes us different to just another gig!
However, our sense of community is about to be put to the test. We face some challenging times financially and some difficult decisions and I want to be very transparent about those.
On average this year, we have lost £1100/month, every month. (It has stabilised in the last 4 or 5 months with increased ticket sales, reduced spending on extras and next year we have some more income in the pipeline.)
The reasons are complex but essentially the impact of Covid and the loss of some loyal audience/members, reduced numbers of paying members, increased costs/inflation and low ticket sales and, most importantly, we’ve had NO funding or sponsorship in the last year or so.
We’re ending the year with a predicted loss this season of approx. £11,000.
We have £11,000 in the bank...
We have options: either we raise significantly more income quickly or we restructure and change what we do. We may have to do both.
Of course, we are looking at funding and sponsorship but that is tough to get until our finances are on track. Not many funding pots want to fund "running costs" and no-one wants to fund a sinking ship - it’s not a good look! Furthermore, you can imagine in today’s social and economic climate, funding of other projects for those in social need does and should take priority.
We need to follow the lead of Wigmore Hall (yes, let’s aim high!) and other orchestras around the world and aim to be largely self-sufficient where we can cover our running costs and apply for funding for special projects.
There are 3 easily accessible streams of income for us that are within our control: ticket sales/orchestral hire; membership fees from playing members; membership fees from non-playing members (a Friends type scheme)
We must focus on these and collaborating with other organisations as much as we can to share costs, increase our visibility and bring in new audiences and members. Every single concert needs to make a profit!
We’ve already started and members of the Committee are working extremely hard to prepare a budget for next season where will hopefully make a small profit, write documents for funding bids, get advice from experienced leaders of other arts' organisations, collaborate with the Choral Society, do outreach to local organisations to increase our audience, programme the next season with finances in mind, rethink how to make membership/friends payments easier etc but we need you.
We need your ideas, your commitment and your support.
As I said to BSO on Wednesday, this is crunch time.
What you can do:
Become more involved. If you can help out the Committee sometimes or on a regular basis, please consider it and talk to us. Right now, I need someone who understands zapier, integrations and payment platforms! If that's your bag, I would love to hear from you - it's driving me crazy!
Learn more about our situation: join us for our Treasurer, Jo Ploszajski's presentation on Zoom next week (time to be confirmed), which will be available as a recording for those who can’t make it. She’s going to show you the accounts in some detail and our budget forecast for next season. She’ll show you how much it costs us to put on a concert, what our ticket sales bring in and the growth we need in order to recover.
Sell tickets: 10 for every concert that you play in. If everyone did this, we would start to make a profit on concerts.
Share your ideas about how we can raise income.
We invite you to become a paid member of BOS - even if you haven’t been one in the past.
To get a form: email [email protected]
Thank you!
We need to continue to make each concert the very best it can be and build our reputation as the best local community orchestra around and thereby embrace this opportunity to create the foundations for the next 60 years of BOS.
As part of that, we have a new event next week...
NEW EVENT!! Open Rehearsal to Recruit New Members
On Wednesday May 14th at Bedford Greenacre Independent School at 7.30-9.30pm we’re holding an open rehearsal for prospective BSO player (aged 16+ at approx Grade 8+ standard). It’s a “listen and chat” event, as we are very close to our concert date. For future recruitment events, we hope to invite people to play along, if they wish.
Please share with friends, family and colleagues. Thanks to Bjorn for embracing this the week before a concert!
Sign up: email us at [email protected]
Sinfonia news:
The Malcolm Arnold Festival October 2025 concert will be on Sunday 19th October at 11am at Northampton Boys’ School. Strings only. More details to follow.
Saturday 21 June 2025
Bedford Choral Society concert
Handel The King shall rejoice
John Ireland A Downland Suite
Greg May (New work)
Michael Rose Songs of Innocence and Experience
Fl, Harp, Timp, Percussion, Strings
Rehearsals:
Tues 20 May, CN south site block 1 hall, Goldington Road.
Tues 10 June CN North site, Polhill Avenue
Thurs 12 June CN South site block 2 hall, Goldington Road,
Mon 16 June (with choir), Biddenham Upper School, Biddenham Turn.
BSO News :
Rehearsal this week:
BGI 7.30-9.30pm
Members’ News:
I saved the best til last...
Our newest and youngest member!
Welcome to baby Isobel! Lucy Buckland (BSO Flute) wrote to tell me that Isobel was born on 22nd April! Isn’t she adorable!
We look forward to welcoming her and seeing you too, Lucy!
With best wishes
Ann Collins
PS To reply to me, hit reply
From our Friends - a great opportunity to collaborate and get us some more visibility:
Dear Bedford Orchestral Society,
My name is Beth and I'm the Activities Lead for a Bedford charity called Friends for Life.
I train and place activities volunteers in care homes to help address loneliness and social isolation amongst older residents, many of whom have dementia and respond well to music, dance and performance, amongst other activities. I work with numerous student groups in local schools as well as adults and young people, all who either offer their talent or skills, or who support the activities coordinators based in the care homes.
I had in mind a possible collaboration whereby, if any of your musicians needed a small audience for performance practice, we could arrange to link them to one or more care homes. If this may be of interest, I'm happy to arrange meeting up in person or discussing further over the phone.
For regular volunteers we usually require attendance at a training day and a DBS check, so we would need to discuss all of this as well. Looking forward to hearing from you, and please do pass this on to any colleagues who may be interested!
Kind regards,
Beth
Beth Parkinson
Activities Lead
07709-160552
www.friendsforlife.org.uk
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