AGM 2023

The Village Voices Annual General Meeting for 2023 was held on Thursday 5th October, 2023, in Old village hall.

Reports were presented by the Musical Director, Ian Clarke; by the Chairperson, Katie Lindenbaum; and on behalf of the Treasurer, Hilary Pinkham.
Musical Director's Report
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​Ian Clarke
​So, my friends, it is my pleasure at this annual meeting to look back over the last year and consider our achievements.

In the autumn term, we worked towards our Christmas concert, in which we combined the Fantasia on Christmas carols by Vaughan Williams with two short works by Mozart. These were joyous, uplifting pieces, and the combination with more traditional carols, some of which involved our excellent last minute, stand-in bass soloist, Theo Perry, proved a great success, even if I had never before conducted such a well-clad choir at an indoor venue. Never had the ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire’ rendition seemed more desperately enticing!
And I’m not sure how Richard Dunster-Sigtermans fingers kept on working through the evening!

We embarked on our spring-time journey towards the Dvorak Stabat Mater with a certain trepidation as to whether we could do this magnificent work justice, but it was ultimately a wonderful performance in Rothwell Church, Richard again finding suitably rich colours on the organ, and four terrific soloists, sourced from the Birmingham Conservatoire, gracing the occasion. The performance demonstrated that such a staple of the big choral repertoire was not only possible, but actually incredibly worthwhile for a choir of our size and make-up. Well done to all!

The workshop was its usual good-natured, happy event, centred on Vaughan Williams’s ‘Toward the unknown region’, and a good sociable occasion with the customary supper afterwards…always enjoyable to do, thanks to everyone who made that day possible, and indeed all of our events.

​Everything always seems to work so smoothly, but I know it is the result of careful work and planning for which much thanks must go to the committee and all other helpers. Especial thanks to Katie for being such an effective chair and support to me as your conductor, though not forgetting you, our members, without whom I would be performing solo!
Thank you.
Chairperson's Report
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​Katie Lindenbaum
Another year has already slipped through our fingers, although it brought us great pleasure in singing together, performing both Christmas and Easter Concert and a Summer Workshop.

The choir is still maintaining the number of participants, though we are still not back to its pre-Covid size. As always we would welcome more singers, most particularly tenors and basses to swell our ranks, but recognize that they are most hard to come by!

As is our custom, the Christmas Concert was held in St Peters Church, Walgrave. We greatly appreciated our audience who helped to warm a very chilly church – the heating cut back to help to reduce the exceptional cost of electricity!

The Easter was held in a new venue for us, being  Holy Trinity Church, Rothwell.  Here, we were made to feel very welcome and really enjoyed singing in the great acoustic to an appreciative audience. 

The Summer Workshop attracted fewer singers and although we had several from elsewhere, it would have been good to see more members from Village Voices coming along. It is always a fun day and is rounded off with a buffet supper after the singing, which helps to raise some much needed choir finds.

I would now like to sincerely thank the committee whose support I greatly appreciate in so many ways. Hilary is expert as our Treasurer, together Kate and Jennie act as Secretary, and Steve works wonders with  the hugely informative website. Chris backs me up in opening the village hall for choir practice and Pam's expertise and knowledge is invaluable to me. Although she is not a committee member, I also want to thank Emily who has helped in updating our advertising expertise by building up an email list of supporters and introducing us to social media to extend our potential audience.

Lastly, I am sure I speak for us all when I thank Ian for his energetic and tireless direction of this choir. He always expects a high standards of us, making no concessions,  even if we don’t always quite get there!  He doesn’t give up on us. His rewording of sections of Brahms Requiem was masterly and certainly made for greater sense and understanding. So thank you, Ian, for all you do – not only here at choir practice, but also behind the scenes, deciding on our programme, liaising with Richard our organist and finding soloists.  Village Voices has now been in existence for over 30 years, the brain child of Ian and Pam and it is a tribute to them both that we are still going strong, and that we have gone from strength to strength is down to you all and your love of singing together.
Treasurer's Report
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​Hilary Pinkham
We started the new financial year in September 2022 with a cushion of about £3600 in the bank account and an increase to £40 per term for members.

We had 30 members, much as last year, to sing Mozart’s Dixit and Magnificat and had a pleasing 58 in the audience, each paying £14. We had a super baritone soloist but unfortunately we made a loss of almost £600.

At Easter the costs were higher, as expected, for our lovely Dvorak Stabat Mater because four soloists and accompanist cost us about £1000 altogether. We had a few more singers this time and  a good audience of 70 in Rothwell church, this time paying £15 each, and yet we made a loss of over £600.

As the time drew near to the workshop date with very few applicants, I felt despondent and almost cancelled the event.   I’m glad we held our nerve though. In spite of only 24 applicants, and one of those unable to make it on the day, we had a fun experience.

The workshop itself almost broke even, I’m pleased to say! We had cancelled the rehearsals and decided not to have any in the future as they were loss-making.

The supper that evening, the plant stall, the raffle and the bar not only made the day more sociable and interesting, but raised £430. Several members of the choir kindly made donations to the choir funds, some by declining refunds due when rehearsals were cancelled. Many thanks are due to all those who contributed food, money and plants, and to those who took part in any way on the day.

We do need more members to take part in this. 9 of the participants were from outside the choir.

In addition to the concerts, Pam Knight and I spent a couple of hours on line again, filling in forms to claim back VAT on the subs of those who have filled in the ongoing gift aid forms. We received 2 years worth (2021 to 2023) from HMRC which happily gave us almost £900. Please let me know if you would like to gift aid your subs and have not yet signed a form, or if you wish to be taken off the list.

​In July we held a raffle at one of Katie’s afternoon Bridge Drives and made £164.50.
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To conclude: We ended the year with almost £3900, having made a small overall gain.