Another good rehearsal last Friday followed by an extremely useful discussion about Christmas.

Rhoda, Mary and I met with Jon and Mick at Newstead Abbey on Wednesday morning. It was a very encouraging, productive meeting. The overwhelming message was that they want us to perform at Newstead; not only at Christmas but at other times of the year as well! Another message was that whatever we do must not result in a loss on the Newstead Abbey balance sheet.

The outcome is that we have a date for a Christmas event at Newstead on 18th December 2022.

They came up with the idea to offer a tour of the house, refreshment and a concert as part of their Christmas at Newstead package; a concert only ticket would be still available. We would compromise by not using the instrumentalists at that event but arranging a concert of our own to use the instrumentalists the weekend before. Our project would be to find a venue in an area where we can attract an audience to bring in enough money to finance the event. Here are Mary’s detailed notes of the meeting.

As last week we will finish Friday’s singing at 9:00 for feedback and preliminary discussion before the committee meets to start the process.

Here is the music list for this Friday:

You will read form the meeting notes that Newstead Abbey are hosting a Japanese exhibition from Kew Garden. Aka-Tonbo is there as our only Japanese piece; it is also vaguely floral.