January Meeting

Your correspondent receiving some much needed
advice from his grandson

A belated Happy New Year to all members of the Bromley Guitar Society!

Unfortunately I missed the last meeting which explains my absence from the photo in the last issue...probably just as well- an overweight Aussie is not a pretty sight!! Still it is great to return back from Australia, after a stint of grand parenting, to take up the cudgels once more and faithfully record the highs and lows (not that there are too many of those) of life in the BGS.

I have also been a bit remiss in keeping abreast with developments in the Classical Guitar World and I hope to put that right this year! One of my New Year Resolutions!!

Upon returning for the first meeting this January, I was pleased (and secretly terrified) to note how advanced the standard of ensemble performance was since I attended the November Meeting. Tributes have to be paid to members John Mann and Rob Sellery who have proved to be worthy successors to Ray Butcher in organising and ably leading everyone through the mysteries of Joporo (Forrest) and Minuet and Trio (Von Calls). We were introduced to these pieces in November and the reason for my terror is that everyone has steamed ahead with the pieces with the exception of yours truly who has a bit of work on his hands in order to catch up!!

 I am indebted (along with all the other players of Guitar part 1) to Den Stockton for annotating the Joporo piece with finger placement guides which were invaluable! And it was great to see the return of our old Enfield task master Ray Butcher , who dropped in after a long absence! And he is still on form!!

As per usual we were treated to an evening of excellent solo performances as well.

Solos included
Falling Tears composed and performed by Danny Kim
Somebody Loves Me (Gershwin) performed by Freddie Carvalho
Pla-it Cool (Dunlea)
That's a Wrap (Dunlea)
Stripey Strips (Dunlea) All three pieces performed by Jenny Wormald

11 Junction St, Newstead (composed and performed by Andrew Ferrier and dedicated to his Grandson)

Stairway to Heaven  and Joropo (Merlin) performed by Dave Hampton
 Vals Poetico No.1 (Granados) Larisa Lieberman and Vince Chittenden
Scarborough Fair performed by Vince Chittenden

We are grateful to Vince and his sound pixies for recording and publishing the solos.
 The link can be found here http://www.questel.co.uk/bgs/bgs21.shtml

Special thanks to Rob and John for the work they have put into the ensemble work.  Thanks to their efforts,  we are confident that we will have something to show for the Federation of Guitar Societies meeting in July (need to check) as well as the next Beckenham Music festival.

And my thanks to Larisa who organised the refreshments for the evening.

See you all soon

Andrew Ferrier Hon Sec BGS