HarmonicaUK Newsletter - January 2024

Happy new year to all our HarmonicaUK members!
We all hope you had a lovely holiday season and are looking forward to 2024.

We are already making plans for the coming year, artists are being booked for Saturday session workshops, and for the annual October festival, details to be announced soon. Apologies for the delay in the winter issue of Harmonica World, the magazine will be with you all as soon as possible.

I must put out another appeal for volunteers to help with the charity. We are seriously short staffed at the moment, and need help with all aspects of the organisation - editing, proofreading, membership, videoing, events, production, and social media. Unfortunately, if we do not get offers of help, we may have to start reducing some of the services we currently offer.

HarmonicaUK is run purely by volunteers and unfortunately the amount of hours needed to keep it running far outstrips the amount of hours our hard-working team have to offer at this present time! If you can spare any time at all, please get in touch, email [email protected].

You may think you don’t have the skills to help, but any little help you can offer can be utilised and will be much appreciated.

Events this month include our regular first Saturday of the month Open Mic on 6th January, 5 PM UK time. Also, we have our weekly virtual coffee mornings at 11 AM UK time every Friday.

If you missed the Christmas coffee morning, then you missed around 25 of the biggest names in Harmonica in a special festive session hosted by Pete Hewitt, Adam Glasser, Dave Hambley, and Roger Trowbridge, where around 100 attendees enjoyed listening to the chat from our guests.

Looking forward to next month, I will give you a heads up that our first Saturday Session workshop will be led by none other than Joe Filisko on Saturday 10th Feb, 5 PM UK time. It will be on “Foundations and Fundamentals on the Diatonic Harmonica”. This is a members only workshop and details of the exclusive session can be found in the members section of our website closer to the time.

We look forward to hosting you at this and other upcoming events. Please read on for an important message regarding memberships.

Keep blowin’

Dave. 

Dave Colclough, Chair

Membership Renewals

We are coming up to the time when the bulk of membership Renewals are due. 

Before we moved to the new online system, some members paid by bank Standing Order or repeating PayPal payments.  We are currently experiencing a high volume of payment duplications, where people with existing repeat paypal payments have also renewed by credit card. 

As duplicate payments and refunds incur an administration fee that we have to pay, we have taken the decision to cancel all outstanding PayPal subscriptions that are unpaid. We apologise for the short notice and for any inconvenience caused by this, if you are unable to renew via the website, you can still renew by PayPal as a one-off payment and as a last resort. Please email [email protected] if this affects you and we will make the appropriate arrangements. 

No members will miss the upcoming edition of the magazine as a result of this decision. Thank you for your understanding.