In the past year, we have staged eleven concerts, extended our reach to two new venues, which we hope will bring in new audiences, and continued our community engagement programmes. Generally, audience figures have remained high, and ticket revenue, together with grants and donations, leave us in a strong financial position at the end of my first year of chairmanship – though I take no personal responsibility for it. Our treasurer, David Rees, will explain in more detail later.
 

With costs increasing everywhere, particularly with increased musicians’ fees – totally understandably, since they are self-employed and must live – we increased our ticket prices in January this year by £3 to £20 and £17 for members, while still offering tickets for £2 to under 25s and free to under 15s. This does not seem to have had any negative  impact on audiences, while providing a useful boost to our income.
 

Innovations this year. A new venture in August was an open-air summer concert in collaboration with the Scarr bandstand, an event very much driven by Corinna Arnold. This was a free concert paid for by generous sponsorship by Ron Birch and another donor who wishes to reman anonymous, and was very successful, bringing classical music to a wider audience; we’d like to repeat the experience in some form.
 

We also staged our first concert in Ross on Wye – I do take accept responsibility for that, because I am involved with createRoss with whom we collaborated in staging the concert. The Carducci Quartet played like angels, and there were more than 140 in the audience, many of whom were new to Wye Valley Music. The event was supported by generous sponsorship from Jean Hancock in memory of her husband Roger. We have already arranged a repeat visit to Ross in June 2026 and you’ll hear about those plans from Mike Haines in a minute. The concert will be sponsored by John Osborn,  those generous assistance this year brought us Bojan Čičić and his Illyria Consort.
 

Plans for 2025/2026. We have an exciting programme of concerts ahead, booked up to July 2026, being the remaining part of our concert programme year. Our outreach programmes continue to develop and you will hear more details on all of these areas soon.
 

Changes on the committee. As you will see the committee continues to evolve. The big change this year is that long-serving members Michael Bradley and Martin Fenn-Smith have both announced their resignation. Enormous thanks are due to both of them for their essential work – Martin, in particular, has shaped Wye Valley Music through his years as Chair and beyond. We shall miss them, but you will still see them both at concerts. Michael has promised to continue to help out with his bell from time to time. Though he can’t be here today, Bill Fulp has offered himself for election and we look forward to welcoming him.
 

But there’s still plenty of opportunity for you to help if you’d like to. We are approaching our 60th anniversary (in 2027) and are obviously very keen to make sure that Wye Valley Music continues beyond. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you’d like a chat about how you might help.
 

Thank you. Finally, I’d like to thank all members of the committee for their generous help and support over the past year. Thanks as well to those on whose services we depend – St Briavels Church, Philip Kennedy our piano tuner, Jane Harvey, our social media and print publicist, Caroline Jones our graphic designer and Wyastone our printers.

I’ve talked about generosity a great deal. We couldn’t exist without it. Thank you all very much—
 

Ian Lewis
Chair
12 October 2025