I am delighted to write my first proper piece as the new Acting Chairman of the Havant Orchestras in this summer issue of our Newsletter.  It is a time of new beginnings and I have certainly begun to assimilate many things about the administration of the Havant Orchestras that are new to me.  I'm also proud to honour our past and to be part of such a remarkable tradition of music making.  Thank you to Steve Bartholomew for all he has done for the Orchestras to date.  I know he will continue to be an active Member of the Society in the future.

At our recent Committee Meeting, we discussed possible changes to the way the Orchestras will progress and how the background administration can be undertaken now that Sandra needs more time with her family.  There will be much more on this subject in the next Newsletter.  There is no way to thank Sandra for the work she has done behind the scenes for the Orchestras during the past 50 years but ‘Thank you Sandra’.  You are leaving us a legacy to be proud of!

Thank you also to the Committee and the Orchestras for being so supportive at a time of huge change for us all.

I am really pleased that Tom Hammond is able to conduct the HSO on Saturday after some very enjoyable and successful rehearsals.  He’s written an interesting introduction and we hope he will enjoy conducting the music as much as Orchestra will enjoy performing it.

We hope you will be able to join us at our concert on September 21st at the Hayling Island Community Centre.  It is always wonderful to see friendly faces from our other concerts at a different venue and we are looking forward to performing the programme that has been chosen by Colin Jagger.

In the meantime, enjoy the music on Saturday and please make yourself known to me if you are able to.  It will be wonderful to meet you.

Best wishes

Becky Hill

Saturday 6 July's Programme

Upbeat in the Inner Foyer at 6.30

Hello To You ALL!

Alex Creamer and I will be leading the Upbeat workshop on Saturday.  If you played the bottles in February then you’ll really enjoy our Samba Band!  Come and join us to make
A LOT OF NOISE!

Best wishes,
Elise Fairley

Upbeat Workshop Leader

Pre-Concert Interlude

Please join us in the Octagon Room at 7pm to celebrate the performance of a local young musician.  More details will be available at the concert.

Best wishes,
Becky Hill

David Le Page was born in Guernsey and began learning the violin at the age of seven.  He gained a place at the Yehudi Menuhin School, aged eleven, and was a prize winner in both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and the Yehudi Menuhin competition.  David completed his studies in Bern with Igor Ozim and in London with Sidney Griller.

He has worked with a diverse selection of artists and ensembles as a director, soloist and chamber musician and has formed his own groups the Le Page Ensemble, The Harborough Collective and Mysterious Barricades.  He has made many recordings.

In 1999 David was appointed leader of the Orchestra of the Swan, a Stratford-upon-Avon based chamber orchestra with whom he regularly appears as soloist and director.  David was recently appointed as an ambassador for the European String Teachers Association and teaches at Birmingham Conservatoire.

David plays on a violin made by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume in 1874.

How did you get into conducting?

My route into conducting was a little unusual.  Nobody in my family had much if any interest in classical music, but my parents had bought a couple of records and amongst them was a collection of Sibelius' shorter works including The Swan of Tuonela.  Aged 8 or so I started listening to these amazing pieces and that was it; hook, line and sinker.

I then took up the trombone (a kind neighbour owned one, and let me have it).  I continued lessons at school, joined local music service groups in Wolverhampton and for some reason I cannot fathom, I just knew I wanted to conduct. Aged 16, I put on a charity concert, a programme I now recognise as distinctly odd: Marriage of Figaro Overture, Bizet Carmen Suite No.1 (!) and the Faure Requiem. Someone said afterwards I wasn't bad – but I don't think I really had a clue what I was doing…

Trombone playing took me to London, and I studied at the RAM with Dudley Bright. I maintained an interest in conducting, again organising concerts with fellow students, including a whole Festival dedicated to Danish music.

The next ten years were dominated by freelance work on trombone and sackbut.  Yet, conducting was always nagging away at me and in 2003 I formed a professional ensemble, sound collective, which exists to this day and is a project I am very proud of.

In 2005 I began working as a guest conductor at Trinity College of Music and was invited to apply for a new Junior Fellowship position supported and chosen by the late, great, Sir Charles Mackerras.  I spent two years in intensive conducting projects at Trinity (mainly opera) and had the enormous privilege of spending time observing Sir Charles at work.  He didn't teach me to conduct – he was firm about not feeling he could actually teach it anyway – but I learnt an enormous amount from him in that time.

By 2008 the trombone was put aside, the baton took over and I started to 'collect' orchestras to work with.  I also competed in some competitions with varied success, the Sibelius International and Leeds, where I was a semi-finalist in 2009.

One chance recommendation led me to, of all places, the West Bank where I now work on a fairly regular basis with the Palestine Youth Orchestra, an ensemble run by the Edward Said Conservatory of Music.

How are the programmes selected for the orchestras you conduct regularly?

Repertoire is key for me, and wherever possible I look for themes - musical and extra musical – to link pieces together and hopefully make interesting connections between composers, styles, history and so on.

Have you conducted the works in Saturday’s programme before?

In this programme I have only conducted one work before, the Carmen Suite.

Had you been to Hampshire before?

I'm not entirely unfamiliar with Hampshire having previously conducted as a Guest with the City of Southampton Symphony.  I love the north county especially, and when possible walk long-distance paths around Overton.   I also conduct/teach at an International Summer  School held at Winchester College in the Summer, the Ingenium Academy.

Thank you Tom;  Enjoy the concert!

CDs for this concert

Sourced by Gordon Egerton (Clarinet)

Berlioz – Rob Roy overture
San Diego Symphony Orchestra,
Yoav Talmi (c/w 6 other overtures).
Naxos 8.550999 (bargain price).

Ravel – Mother Goose Suite
Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Yannick Nezet-Seguin
(c/w Daphnis & Chloe Suite no.2, Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, & La Valse).
EMI 9663422 (mid price).

Glazunov – Violin Concerto
Julia Fischer, Russian National Orchestra, Yakov Kreizberg
(c/w Khachaturian Violin Concerto & Prokofiev Violin Concerto no.1).
Pentatone PTC5186059 (full price).

Borodin – Symphony no.3
Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwartz
(c/w Symphonies nos.1 & 2).
Naxos 8.572786 (bargain price).

Bizet – Carmen Suite no.1
Montreal Symphony Orchestra,
Charles Dutoit (c/w Carmen Suite no.2, L'Arlesienne Suites nos.1 & 2, La Jolie Fille de Perth Suite, & Symphony in C).
Decca Double Decca E4751902 (2 mid priced discs).

Formal Notice of EGM and AGM

An EGM of the Havant and District Orchestral Society will be held at 7.00pm on Friday 6 September 2013 at St Faith’s Church Hall, The Pallant, Havant, to be followed immediately by the AGM.  All members of the Society (i.e. playing members and season ticket holders) are invited to attend.

The purpose of the EGM is to approve a new constitution, a copy of which should be enclosed with this newsletter.  Our current constitution is 30 years old and no longer conforms fully to our needs.  The new constitution is based on model constitutions from the Charity Commission and Making Music (the National Federation of Music Societies).

If you have any comments or suggested modifications to the new constitution, please submit them by 6 July to Tony Gutteridge, acg@waitrose.com, 023 9247 4681, 23 Grove Road, Havant, PO9 1AR.  This will give us time to make any necessary changes and resubmit the proposed constitution to the membership before the meeting.

Places are available on the committee and nominations for election may be sent to the Chairman in advance (with the names of candidate, proposer and seconder) or submitted at the meeting.

Following the AGM, refreshments will be served and the evening will conclude with a rehearsal to which all non-playing members are invited.

Thank You …

… to all our players and listeners.  It is not easy for the Havant Orchestras to “leave the nest” after 50 years of nurture from Peter and Sandra Craddock.  We appreciate your support and hope to see you again soon to enjoy more music-making from September.

Saturday 21 September

Hayling Island Community Centre
The Park, Hayling Island

Havant Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Colin Jagger

Tickets:  £10.00
Seniors:  £9.00
(Season Ticket Holders also £9.00)
Students: £5.00
(incorrectly shown as £3.00 in the printed newsletter, sorry!)
Children: £1.00
on sale at Ferneham Hall on 6 July,
at the AGM on 6 September,
in person from HICC and
Hayling Island Bookshop Mengham,
and by post from  1, Beacon Square, Emsworth, PO10 7HU (+sae)
from early August.

Cheques payable to HADOS, please

Sunday 14 July, 7.30pm

Chichester University Chapel
The Consort of Twelve:
'From Baroque to Classical'
Tickets £14, under 18 £7
from 01243 813595.

Sunday 8 September, 6.00pm

Bosham Church
The Consort of Twelve:
'The Age of the Baroque'
Tickets £14, under18 £7
from 01243 371128.

Thursday 19 September, 7.30pm

Stansted House Musical Evenings:
The Dolce String Quartet
Tickets £8 to include interval refreshments
from Stansted Office on 02392 412265

Tuesday 15 October, 7.30pm

King's Theatre, Southsea
An Ellen Kent Production:
Verdi's "Aida"
Tickets £27, £24, £23, £20.25 & £18
on 023 9282 8282.