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President's Letter 19th
July 2010
It is great to be president
this year and just a few months into my period of office we have
quite a lot happening. We have had three very well attended meetings
at Teigngrace, Topsham and Ashburton and a training evening at St
Paul's, Newton Abbot..
I enjoy going out to the
various churches in all sorts of remote and not so remote places
here in South Devon. But I do feel that we need to do more than
this. Our age profile, about which we ourselves can do little, means
that we need to recruit a younger generation into becoming
interested in the organ. Sadly we have lost three of our active
members in the last 12 months. So I hope we can concentrate on
building up our membership with a younger generation and enthuse
them to take over gradually, no doubt in their own way.
We also need to develop and
continually learn - most of us are amateurs at this and I for one
struggle week by week at the console although I greatly enjoy it
when it goes well; but a moment of inattention...To that end Ray and
I prepared a training event at St Paul's, Newton Abbot which was
attended by a number of us and members of the church. The event was
intended to test the water on slicker play-overs for hymns and to
seek out what really works and what doesn't especially as the type
of hymns and worship songs that we are expected to play nowadays has
modernised a lot.
I was asked to help again
this year with the Young Bell-Ringers' Service at St Paul's and this
proved interesting.
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 Last
year we helped out and enthused a number who wanted to try out the
organ. A year on and three young people came and played the organ
for the service all doing well and in some instances extremely well.
They thanked me for the help given last year so, as mentioned at
Ashburton, I would like to suggest that we hold young organist days
at about four of our churches each year. I am happy to do this at St
Paul's for the Newton Abbot area and I suggest we should try to get
events set up in the Teignmouth area, Torbay and Totnes/Dartmouth
areas. Volunteer churches and organists would be greatly
appreciated.
We were originally asked to
play at the Flower Festival at St Mary's, Wolborough but at the last
minute they decided against live organ music and went for classical
CDs. Alan did not get the message from me in time and turned up and
played his slot anyway and so did I for half an hour on the
Saturday; but they all liked it anyway!
And finally, I propose to
arrange a President's day out in August; this year I am planning a
trip from Paignton on the steam train to Kingswear and across on the
ferry to Dartmouth where we will play suitable music at one or more
churches there, returning by the same route.
Clive
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