For Members

Hello All,

Here are the details for the last rehearsal tomorrow evening and the concert day on Sunday.

Friday 2nd October 7-10pm Oadby Trinity Methodist Church
George has sent the following order for the evening;
ET
Magnificent 7
Test Drive
633 Squadron
Ben Hur Prelude & Love Theme
Sea Hawk
007 Suite
Out of Africa
Chocolat (Chamber Orchestra)
Cinema Paradiso (Strings)
Psycho – Prelude and Murder (Strings)

This will be the fourth time that we have rehearsed at Oadby Trinity so it will be familiar to a lot of us now. There is a large free car park (after 6pm) but as it is the first Friday in the month, there will be the Fish Friday in the adjacent Zephs cafe – they will therefore be entertained with some film music! (Finishes around 7.30pm)

David and I will set up the church before the rehearsal as before. It won’t take long to put it all back afterwards if there is a small team involved.

IMPORTANT – the central reservation access to the car park on the A6 from the Leicester direction is shut off at the moment so you should go through Oadby along the Parade. Coming from the Market Harborough direction, access is as usual off the A6. I will send an annotated map in a separate message to follow this.

Sunday 4th October DMH 

Rehearsal 10am-1pm

Car Park 3 on University Road will be open from 9am. Cost £4 all day. 
You can leave and come back if needed – BUT as we have over 1000 people coming, the car park will be almost certainly be full so I advise caution.

Please sign in on the usual lists at Stage Door.

We will be running the rehearsal in concert order.

Break around 11.30am -Foyer Kiosk is open)
I will attach the running order again with the following message. Please do print it off if you haven’t already.

Pre concert talk2-2.30pm with John Florance, George and David.

Concert 3pm
FIRST HALF           3-3.50pm (approx)
INTERVAL              3.50-4.15pm (approx)
SECOND HALF      4.15-5.15pm (approx)

George will be speaking at certain points throughout the concert but not before every piece.

Music

Please do not forget to bring it all with you on Sunday (17 pieces if playing in everything!) and after the concert it needs to be all back in the brown envelopes please.

If you do have any spare String parts I would prefer to have them on Friday evening.

The Library team will collect up everything on stage after the concert.

Music Stands

I think it may be a good idea to have some spare ones available given the size of the orchestra. I will bring mine and the blue cards.

What to wear

We are wearing all black – 

Gents  – black trousers, jacket and open neck shirt
Ladies – usual black outfits

Tickets are now over the 1000 but please still do encourage anyone you know who may want to come along. The more the merrier!

See you on Friday evening,

With best wishes,
Robert

Dear Bardi players,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to the questionnaire with your responses to, and interest in the proposed June’27 Bardi tour to Belgium. 

There was a really good response from many areas of the orchestra but unfortunately due to the overall lack of numbers and so the resulting higher costs, it has been decided that it is not viable to go ahead with this Tour.  

The Board would like to thank the Tour Committee – Jane Bevan, Christine Taylor, Janet Crew and Robert Calow – for all of their hard work over the last six months in trying to put this project together.

We now look forward to the exciting upcoming concerts as we celebrate 40 years of The Bardi Symphony Orchestra. 

The Bardi Board

Evening All,

This is an update before our all day rehearsal this coming Sunday, 27th September.
10am-1pm/2-4.45pm Main Hall LGS.

At the end of Friday’s rehearsal, George indicated that he would look at some cuts in the James Bond Suite to shorten some of the songs.
He has sent the following cuts through and has asked if possible if they could be put into your parts before Sunday, though he will go through them all again when we get to the suite in the rehearsal. Please do try not to mark the music too much as all of the markings will need to be removed afterwards. Thank you.

JAMES BOND THEME
1) The beginning to bar 32 is played without any repeats – changed from Friday
2) DS back to bar 3 and play again to bar 32
3) Cut bar 33 & 34, and then play bar 35 to bar 46

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
1) Cut bars 47 to 78
2) Play 79 to 96
3) Cut bars 97 to 100

THUNDERBALL
1) Play bar 101 to bar 128
2) Cut bars 129 to bar 142

MOONRAKER 
1) Play bar 143 to 170
2) Cut bars 171 to 207

Play from bar 208 to the end – so no cuts in You Only Live Twice, OHMSS and Diamonds are Forever.

Some of you have mentioned to me that there are some yellow signs around the Great Glen bypass indicating a road closure on Sunday.

Having had a good look, it appears that the only road that is shut (until 2pm) is the road into Leicester (A6) from the first roundabout at the Leicester end of the bypass. Driving from Leicester or from the Market Harborough direction to the school should be fine.

See you on Sunday,

With best wishes,
Robert

Evening All,

I do hope everyone has had a good summer.

The first rehearsal is now fast approaching for the Film Music concert and so here is the update going through all the details.

REHEARSALS
Friday 18th September  7-9.45pm Leicester Grammar School(LGS) Main Hall
Monday 21st September 7-9.45pm STRINGS LGS Main Hall
Sunday 27th September 10am-1pm/2-4.45pm  LGS Main Hall
Friday 2nd October 7-10pm OADBY TRINITY METHODIST CHURCH

This will be the 4th season where the final rehearsal is at Oadby Trinity  –  the first weekend in October is now always the open weekend for both the Upper and Lower schools at LGS. David and I will go in and set everything up beforehand. It also means that we can rehearse up to 10pm.

Concert day DMH Sunday 4th October
Rehearsal 10am-1pm 
Concert 3pm

George Morton and I are looking at the order for each rehearsal. I’ll get back next week on this before the 18th.

There are only two pieces of music that require notes;
Chocolat Suite – we are only playing the main theme which is the first 97 bars to the double bar.
Sea Hawk Suite – we are cutting after the pause at bar 123 to start again at bar 402. 
This is the LSO André Previn 75th Birthday concert version which can be found on Youtube (audio only) from 2005.

As with the Musicals concert, the music is all in individual brown envelopes with the music order on the front indicating what music is in it. Please keep the music with the envelope at all times and it will be collected from your stands in them after the concert. 

Acoustic Screens – the Bardi now has several acoustic screens. They will be at the all day Sunday rehearsal and so please do try them out if you are in front of the brass or percussion. They will be then at DMH on the concert day.

I will send a following e-mail with the new season brochure, the flyer for the concert and the concert running order for you to print off. 
Please send the brochure/flyer to anyone who may like to come to the concert. Tickets are going really well.
Buying tickets for all four concerts saves 15% , while three concerts saves 10%.
The Bardi players Sub deal gives us £2 off any full price adult ticket in the hall – BARDI2627 – when buying tickets from the Box Office.

Finally the Conductor and Repertoire committee are looking for a volunteer to join the committee from the membership of the upper strings (first and second violins). The committee, under the chairmanship of Julian Haslam, reports directly to the board. The role involves obtaining feedback from the section on guest conductors, to bring knowledge and input to the committee in identifying potential conductors for the orchestra and input in selecting repertoire for the orchestra to play. Commitment is approximately 6/7 meetings a year plus associated preparation work. Please contact Julian (julianhaslam01@gmail.com OR 07963 042556) for more information.  

Many thanks.
See you on Friday the 18th.

With best wishes,
Robert

Dear Bardi players,

For those of you who missed the last concert, this will come as a surprise!  The Board has decided that a suitably celebratory way to mark the orchestra’s 40^th Anniversary will be to do a tour.  In the final rehearsal in May we asked for a show of hands and many players showed interest in being involved. 

Having now received quotes from a tour company, we can announce some details:

• We will be going to Ghent in Belgium from Wednesday 2nd June – Sunday 6th June 2027 (during Half Term week)
• There will be a maximum of 3 concerts, one of which will hopefully be in Brussels
• Travel will be by coach
• The workshop in the February Half Term will hopefully be used as a rehearsal day (repertoire to be decided) but there will probably also be a rehearsal the weekend before travelling. 

The tour company we are using is extremely busy at this time of year, with various groups departing on tours, so we are awaiting various costings. As soon as they have been finalised we will let you know. In the meantime, please save the dates! 

We do hope many of you will join us on what will be, I’m sure, a very exciting venture.  If you have any questions/comments and would like to get in touch directly, my email address is   jane_bevan@btinternet.com

Best wishes

Jane

Hello All,

I have received some words from Ben following our Musicals extravaganza on Sunday afternoon. He clearly liked his time with us.
I know that both Shona and Stephen really enjoyed the concert too and were very pleased with how it all went. There were nearly 1050 people there so rounding off another hugely successful orchestra season. 
I hope everyone enjoyed the post concert get together in the Bar too!

I will follow this message with another e-mail which has the new season schedule and brochure attached. The Schedule will be also be in the Members section on the Bardi website.
The new season tickets will go on sale tomorrow and as before, there will be both the 4 and 3 concert subscription prices which are really good value. We will also have our usual individual concert sub deal with the code BARDI2627 which gives £2 off any full price ticket.
Please do send the brochure to family and friends and anyone else who you think would like to come along!

With best wishes,

Robert

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Hi everyone

This is just a quick note to thank everyone for their work at the performance this weekend but also at the rehearsals running up to it. Throughout this process you have been both musically rewarding to work with but also really welcoming to someone entering your long established community, for that I genuinely thank you. The long established nature of your group is clear by the quality of your playing but that can sometimes lead to inflexibility and intransigent music making, but this isn’t the case with you. You were receptive, willing to humour my suggestions and even able to change those decisions when they came in contact with the excellent singers on the Sunday. 

You all take credit for this and it is something you can all be proud of but it’s definitely helped by a brilliant leader in Adam. Adam, you’re technically and musically great but also have the knack of chipping in just the right amount with suggestions that push the standard whilst not belittling anyone’s efforts in the process, this knack is rarer than you’d think!

Your backstage leadership is great as well, resulting in slick, well organised and professional events delivered to a large audience in a fantastic venue. 
You’ve done 40 years and it’d be good to see another 40 hove into view.

So, thanks for having me, I’ve loved it and wish you all the best with your next gigs.

Cheers
Ben

Thank you so much for everything yesterday, what a wonderful orchestra you have all built up there!

Please pass on my thanks and congratulations to everyone who played so brilliantly and worked so hard behind the scenes to make such a great concert. It was a great pleasure to work with you all; I loved your commitment and enthusiasm for this great music. All your hard work really paid off!  I very much hope we can work together again and explore lots more repertoire together.  Great too, to see you attracting such a large and supportive audience, something you very much deserve and a great testament to your collective achievement.

Very best wishes
Phil

———

First of all, thank you so much for having me, for the orchestra’s warm welcome and great hospitality. I love the bear! It was a pleasure to work with the Bardi, and I hope we will meet in the future! 

Huge congratulations on Shostakovich 5th, it was a fantastic performance, and I am so glad I could stay and listen to it. 

Thank you once again for everything and I wish all the best to you and the orchestra! 

Sincerely,
Antonina

Hello All,

A very Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you all had a good Christmas.

Our annual Festive extravaganza was again incredibly well received by all present. So many still say that Christmas doesn’t start until they come to our concert!

Please put Saturday 19th December with the rehearsal on Friday 18th December 2026 in your diaries.

Looking ahead to the summer, our annual Charity concert at De Montfort Hall will be on Sunday 14th June at 3pm. 
If you remember from a previous message, it is a week later than usual because of the Rutland Sinfonia concert on Saturday 6th June (plus rehearsal on Friday 5th) and because David and I have our annual Aviation art exhibition that weekend also. The rehearsals will be on Wednesday 10th and Friday 12th June.

We are close to finalising the Charity With the Lions and will get back with details in due course.

With best wishes,

Robert

Hello All,

There have been discussions for some time with Adam about organising a day for the Strings to continue to build on what has been some excellent progress since the start of the New Horizons concert season as well as it giving the chance to enjoy playing string repertoire together without the pressure of a concert.

We had also canvassed your opinion on two concerts to premiere the 7 Ages of Man, a stunning work for Jazz ensemble and Strings by our very own Paul Mottram, to take place over a weekend in June next year. Unfortunately, the logistics to put this all together have meant that at the moment it is postponed, but it then opens up the opportunity to have a day together earlier in the season.

The proposed date is Sunday 1st March to take place in the main hall at Leicester Grammar School. We would be keeping to our usual timings so 10am-1pm, lunch and then 2-5pm. We are intending to organise and evening social afterwards at a nearby pub or restaurant.

The Orchestra would be hiring the Hall for this event as it is not a normal rehearsal for a concert within the season and so it would be great to have a really good attendance.

I would now please ask that you get back to your String Leads to confirm your availability as soon as possible so that they can get an idea of the numbers and start to put everything in place.

Discussions are taking place about the repertoire that will be looked at during the day with Adam, who will be leading from the Violin – meaning this is also a chance to experience playing repertoire unconducted.

Many thanks,

With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!

Robert

Hello All,

I am sure that we all agree that the concert on Sunday was another success. 

The final audience total was 1065 and so the first two concerts have had 200 more attending at each than last season. Thanks to all who have cajoled family and friends to come along!

José was very happy with how it all went and has sent us some very nice words. Clearly he would like to come back….

There will be a separate update coming soon with all of the details about the Young Musician concert on Saturday 24th January and the Workshop Day on Saturday 21st February, both at Holy Trinity Church on Regent Road.
Please look out for that and as ever please be proactive about letting the section leads know regarding your availability.

Best wishes,

Robert

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My dear Bardi Symphony Orchestra,

Congratulations on a great performance of a marathonic programme.

Thank you very, very much for your commitment, your energy and professionalism. Thank you for making me feel welcomed and safe to be myself, and for the opportunity of re-creating and rediscovering music with you.

I can only hope we can create more memories together in the future, and in the meantime I wish you great music making and hope that the cohesion we achieved and the sound you built for yourself, stays with you and becomes your default.

Count on me always as a dear friend and supporter.

My best wishes,

José