Are we nearing the end?
Published Thursday 27 May 2021
There is a glimmer of hope. Theatres and concert halls in Wales can now reopen. Of course, the Devil is in the detail and it’s almost certain that before there is a wholesale reopening, there will be a series of test events, leading to a set of measures that will govern exactly when and how venues reopen again. Realistically, we think it will be the autumn before we are up and running again with live performances. But let’s see.
Over the long period of the arts shutdown, it’s been important to keep in touch with our players so that they feel supported through the pandemic. We have held catch-up Zoom sessions to keep them up to date with Sinfonia Cymru, and also to provide a platform for discussions among themselves. We also provided a series of professional development sessions on a range of topics, paying musicians a fee to attend these. They have gone down particularly well:
“Thank you very much, it’s incredibly supportive of you in these quite stressful times. Thank you for being there for us!”
“Thanks again for really caring for us as musicians”
“Thank you for a lovely session and for supporting us through this time – I’m very grateful to be a part of this orchestra!”
We plan some more of these in the summer. If you would like to support these events, by making a contribution, we have a lovely ‘Donate Now’ button on our website – it’s very easy to use! As a guideline, we pay each musician a fee of just over £80 to attend each session but if you are thinking of donating, any amount would be most welcome and very much appreciated.
With live events still uncertain, we will continue to produce a small number of filmed events for you to explore through our website or our media channels. The first of these is for wind players with 12 musicians sharing their favourite pieces with you – look out for these in late May / early June. We will also be producing filmed versions of three of our Curate performances, which have now been cancelled as live events for the second year. We will be filming these early next month so they should be available in late June/early July.
As we’ve said before, we can’t wait to be performing live for you again; this time it feels as if we may not have too long to wait!
Peter Bellingham, Chief Executive
& the Sinfonia Cymru team