A short break over summer, and then we are heads down back into planning the various concerts and events that our ensemble has throughout the year.

We have a couple of concerts in February and early March to kick off the ensemble year... not our main concerts, and it will only be my wife and I playing... but they do need have the programming and repertoire sorted out soon. Thankfully, these are mostly new venues and audiences, and so we can reuse a lot of our existing repertoire again.... and that has led us to trying to collate the music scores and information into an easy to find catalogue in our ensemble Dropbox for future use. And in the end, it will be not just Baroque stuff... but Classical era, and modern piano/violin... and even future out into showtunes and jazz/tango stuff!

... and then our first major concert is in the middle of March... and the logistics and repertoire planning has started for that. First the huge cull of the repertoire wishlist... we had about 10 hours worth of music for a 1 hour concert... and the first slash was everything that was okay but not great for this particular ensemble configuration... or wouldn't fit with the pieces that were DEFINITELY in!

... and that has reduced it down to about 90 minutes... which is much better, but it still needs to be slashed down further.. and the next hurdle will be what we can feasibly find in the various online and library archives. Keep in mind that much of our music exists as facsimiles of centuries old publications... and some of them are widely spread and others exist as a single existing copy!

But we are sort of well on the way with that....

.. and then there are the other things that need to be done on the non-music side of things.

The year publicity has started, with some physical postcards being printed and distributed and some online advertising and emails having gone out already.

Financial planning for the year is also underway, with some extra money being temporarily locked away in term deposits... we will also have to write another small grant request for a mini-festival that we are planning...

... and there is that mini-festival to plan... the dates and venue are now locked down for May... and we have to plan the various sessions, and see if we can invite guests and all of that other stuff... plus budgeting and all of that... and launch the ticket sales as well. Fingers crossed that it is as well received and attended as our first temperature test! But you never know!

... oh right, and we need to sort repertoire for that as well...

EEEP!!

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