Posted by: Peter
We had our AGM last night: congratulations to all members of the committee on bringing us through another year in such good shape! And good luck to you for the year to come!
I think it was a good meeting – overall very positive, and highlighted some of the effort that’s required to keep things going. I’m not going to go into detail here – you’ll just have to wait for the minutes, which will be available at our 2012 AGM in about 12 months’ time.
There were a couple of things in the various reports that stood out for me. The first was from Penny, our treasurer, where she said that she will continue to look for sponsorship from companies, and opportunities for additional funding. With Penny’s track record in this area, I’m very optimistic, but I also think that this is something we should all be thinking about: do we have contacts or do we work for organisations who might consider sponsoring us? It’s not that we’re destitute, but sponsorship and funding enable us to do things we might not otherwise consider. There are benefits for organisations as well, in terms of their Corporate Social Responsibility agendas, and increased exposure (we’re happy to acknowledge their contributions, on our website, on this blog, on other materials we produce, and if the amount is sufficient, I’m sure a committee member would be happy to have the organisation’s logo tattooed somewhere on their person).
The other thing came from the Music Director’s report. Roy was very complimentary of our efforts at our concert last Saturday – and rightly so!* It was a great night for us, for our audience, and for the various charities that will benefit from the £3000 or so that was raised.
But the bit that made me think was when Roy was talking about sight-reading. (We’re not too shabby at this, but there’s always room for improvement.) He said:
- The first thing to look for is the key signature
- The second thing to look for is the time signature.
I’ve always thought it was the other way around! I mean, so long as you play in time, you can get away with the odd bum note (well, for the first couple of times, rather than as a general rule, though I admit that I’ve pretty much made this my personal philosophy), but if you’re not in time, it doesn’t really matter if it’s the right note or not (in fact, the right note at the wrong time is actually the wrong note…).
Am I reading too much into this? Is it just me? Do all sax players think this way? (Would that explain anything?) What do you think?
*IMHO
