Dear Members of Rhyl Music Club,
I am writing to welcome you to the new 2024-25 season of concerts and inviting you to renew your membership of the Club. I hope you enjoy perusing the accompanying leaflet which has been produced so professionally.
After uncertain times, we are now able to offer a programme of twelve concerts, supported by the legacy the Club has received from the estate of the late Stephen Pritchard Roberts. We will be showing our appreciation on 29th January 2025, when Elin Pritchard will sing in the inaugural Stephen Pritchard Memorial Concert which will become an annual event to celebrate his memory.
The new season promises to be an exciting and innovative series of concerts – the envy of comparable music clubs almost anywhere in the UK. Let’s face it, this is going to be a phenomenal season! We are so lucky. Being way out of London we can’t quite compete with some club programmes because top older musicians don’t want excessive travel. Most clubs offer between six and eight concerts in a season – twelve is incredibly rare. To organise and co-ordinate this eclectic programme is a feat not only of hard work, but also of artistic and musical sensibility. We all owe Stephen Leeder our gratitude for this new season which he has curated on our behalf.
Our programming won’t suit every taste, but we have a wide range from renowned musicians, such as Peter Donohoe and Robert Cohen, to the youthful energy of the thirty-strong Chetham’s Big Band. Members will be pleased to note that the pianist, Patrick Hemmerle, is returning to the Club as is Anne-Marie Federle, who at age twenty was appointed Principal Horn in the London Philharmonic. She will be accompanied by Harry Rylance, who has also played for us before. These are musicians who have great careers ahead of them – we can only admire Stephen’s powers of persuasion!
Stephen Pritchard Roberts attended concerts at the Club as a young man and Rhyl Music Club’s commitment to support young musicians and nurture their talent lies at the heart of our work in the community here. We have commissioned pieces from students who have played at the Club and are now studying music at the Royal College and Oxford. We will host another Young Musicians Masterclass and Alicja Koder will perform with friends from the Royal College of Music. We will also welcome back the Welsh Chamber Orchestra with Jeremy Huw Williams and former Club member Ellis Thomas who will play Mozart’s Piano Concert No 27 and he will conclude the season with Lisztomania!
As the days draw in, let’s look forward to a wonderful programme of music and please encourage your friends to attend concerts or to join the Club itself. Our subscription of £115 works out at less than £10 per concert – absurdly low for music of such quality. I’m sometimes asked why so few people know about the Club and its concerts and don’t we need to advertise ourselves better…As Club members perhaps it’s up to us to promote the Club and invite friends and family either to join or to bring them to concerts. As I have appealed to you before, we do need more help as the Club is surviving on a handful of volunteers who are trying their best, but can only do so much. To paraphrase JFK, ‘Ask not what your Music Club can do for you, but what you can do for your Music Club….’ A gentle nudge.
With all good wishes,
Denis Lavin, Chair Rhyl Music Club