ANNUAL REPORT 2014
This report covers the period September 30th 2013 to September 30th 2014. It has been produced by your Committee who are:
Chairman Campbell de Burgh
Pipe Major lain McNeill
Drummer's Rep David White
Quartermaster Martin Nolan
Treasurer Alasdair McLeod
Secretary
Assistant Secretary Ben Sutton
The band is managed by the committee under Authority of the Constitution, revised January 2005. The objectives of the band according to the above constitution are:
".. to promote, improve, develop and maintain public education in and appreciation of the art and science of music, particularly Scottish Pipe Band music, by the presentation of public concerts and recitals, and by such other ways as the band shall determine from time to time."
The Band Committee’s Report (the year past)
Programme (see table A)
The reporting year started with a bit of a struggle with a somewhat unique concert in aid of Help for Heroes at Ferndown in November and where we provided four players as a charitable contribution. Things then picked up considerably and especially after a hugely successful Burns night in February. The programme was then marked by a number of events playing in support of brass, wind and choral ensembles which is good for a reputation of flexibility. There was a good turnout for our usual gigs in Dorset and Hampshire.
The highlights of the year were at Christchurch, where we played and collected for the Macmillan Cancer Support fund, and the trip to Spain, where we played in support of the Getxo Folk Festival in Bilbao. Many thanks go to the wives and partners of Band members who collected nearly £700 for Macmillan. This was a fantastic effort all round for a very worthy cause and in memory of past Band members and their families who benefitted from the support the nurses gave. A great trip to Bilbao started by playing for the Mayor of Bilbao followed by performances in several squares in the old town and a concert on the metro. Four days of performances in and around Bilbao included the band playing across the high bridge at Getxo and unscheduled warm up appearances in the main tent.
Membership (see table B)
The membership has changed significantly and currently stands at 26 with 20 actively playing members - 14 pipers and 6 drummers. We welcome our four new players, Dorothy, Alison, Gordon and Alan and a fifth, Verna, who has been a guest for some time and joined the band just after the period of this report.
Learners seem to come and go but currently we have five learner pipers under tuition hoping that one or two will join the playing strength in the not too distant future.
Pipe Major’s and Drum Sergeant’s Comments
PM – There has been something of a turnover in players this year which is good for the band and has also resulted in a higher than usual turnout. Well done all and I see plenty of enthusiasm to move forward. Thanks especially to Iain Russell for taking up the challenge of becoming Pipe Sergeant and as always to Jim Garrioch for his work with the learners. I would also like to thank Alasdair for doing all the ground work necessary for a good trip to Spain and to Campbell, helped I know by others, for stepping into the breach left by the outgoing Secretary.
Very sadly we lost Bruce Royd-Taylor to cancer just before Christmas. He was a master of the pipes and a teacher from whom we all derived great benefit. A huge supporter of the band he is warmly remembered for his patience and guidance through the finer points of musicianship as well as his good company.
With a sudden growth in learners and some catching up to do by new players I would like to try splitting the practice into four tables: Jim G to carry on with the learners with assistance from a band member when required in order to form a table for advanced learners; a table for the newer players to help them catch up on the repertoire and our usual table for pipers who are more confident with our bread and butter sets.
The gigs worked well and I was particularly pleased at the flexibility of the band in Bilbao to take the tube train, bridges and act warm-up in their stride. On these occasions we have to use a bit of common sense on the street marches and the ability to move into 3’s, 2’s, and 4’s was exemplary. A bit more attention to dressing and marching technique will top things of.
I look forward to a good year ahead with hopefully a few more gigs than we have done this year to help refill the coffers.
DS – As always a big thank you to the drum corps for their hard work throughout the year and especially after I damaged my hand and was unable to play the snare for 8 weeks. Even though practice has been a little quiet from time to time we have always been able to put on a good show at gigs.
For the year ahead we have new 3/4 and 6/8 beatings to work on as well as more work needed on rudimental exercises. I plan to refurbish the snare drums next season with new head and snares etc.
Thanks to Digby Wallis for his continued work on producing new drum scores on paper and thank you to everyone for your help throughout the past year.
Finance (see Table C)
The closing balance of £2079.80 is lower than usual due to:
· The amount paid for the hire of the hall. This appears far in excess of the normal annual hall rental fee of between £2,400 and £2,600 but in this financial year we have paid the balance due on last year and an advance on next year. The balance of next year's rentalwill be £1,960.
· Some travel expenses from France last year came into this year.
· QM and PM expenditure is higher than last year due to significant expenditure on orchestral chanters and white shirts.
So we will need to budget a bit more carefully next year. Fixed running costs are roughly:
Hall Rental / 2,640Insurance / 959
Website / 72
Total / 3,671
Assuming a similar income to this year of £4,485 and taking into account the advance in hall fees paid there is an estimated surplus of £1,200 over the current balance of £2,079 to cover QM, PM DS and any travel expenses in the coming year. In order to bring our “cushion” back to match our fixed costs we need to earn more and/or pay less. So ideally we need to charge more and manage a couple more gigs whilst we keep our combination of PM/DS/QM/Travel Expenses within £1,200.
Kit (see table D)
Band kit on loan is in reasonably good condition – well done all for taking good care of it. No major purchases are foreseen for the near future.
Sales and Marketing
The website continues to draw requests for the band to play and is working well with the new Members Only page. Given sustained effort we hope the new CD will be out before summer 2015.
The Facebook page seems hardly worth the effort since not all the band are on Facebook and it draws no custom.
Social
Many members of the band enjoyed a 2013 Christmas dinner at the Man in the Wall pub organised by Dave White and look forward to a repeat in 2014. Several members of the band enjoyed a trip up to Stirling for a pipefest in June but lions and tigers prevented us playing at Alasdair’s daughter’s wedding on the weekend of the Netley Marsh Fair in July. What seems to have become a traditional day for a band picnic at Swanage after the Carnival parade on the same weekend was replaced by a generous invitation to the band to attend young Iain’s wedding party in Bournemouth. For those who managed to get to the end of a very busy weekend it was a great evening with some good piping in good company.
In Sum and Looking Forward
2013/2014 was quite a good year overall with new players bringing attendance figures up considerably. We are well kitted up and now need to be earning a little more to build a bank balance ready for kit replacement in the future.
Musically the band is clearly improving. Bearing in mind the need to allow new members to learn new tunes it is difficult to change the repertoire significantly, especially the marching sets. However we must move on and we intend to do so cautiously and enjoyably with some new tunes for 2015/16.
Campbell de Burgh,
Chairman
Table A - Gigs and attendance 2013/14
Event / Pipers / Drummers3 Nov 13 Charity function Ferndown / 2 / 2
10 Nov 13 Swanage Remembrance Sunday / 7 / 4
30 Nov 13 New Milton Carnival / 9 (inc 2 guests) / 5
14 Dec 13 Highcliffe Carnival / 7 / 3
8 Feb 14 Band Burns Night / 14 / 7 (inc 1 guest)
10 May 14 Brass Band support Boscombe / 2 / 2
15 Jun 14 Armed Forces Day Burton / 11 / 6
12 Jul 14 QV Concert Bournemouth / 6 (inc 1 guest) / 3
26 Jul 14 Netley Marsh Steam Fair / 11 (inc 1 guest / 6 (inc 1 guest)
27 Jul 14 Swanage Carnival / 13 (inc 2 guests) / 5
9 Aug 14 Charity function Christchurch / 13 (inc 1 guest) / 4
4 -8 Sep 14 Bilboa (Spain) / 11 (inc 1 guest) / 7 (inc 1 guest)
20 Sep 14 Ringwood Carnival / 11 (inc 1 guest) / 4
Table B – Annual Comparison of Band Strength
At / PM / Active.Pipers / H’rary.Pipers / LearnerPipers / Bass drum / Side drum / Tenor drum / DM / LearnerDrum / TotalNov 04 / 1 / 14 / 0 / 3 / 1 / 5 / 2 / 1 / 27 (23)
Nov 05 / 1 / 13 / 2 / 2 / 1 / 3 / 1 / 23 (19)
Nov 06 / 1 / 13 / 4 / 1 / 4 / 1 / 24 (20)
Oct 07 / 1 / 13 / 4 / 1 / 4 / 1 / 24 (20)
Nov 08 / 1 / 11 / 8 / 1 / 6 / 1 / 28 (20)
Nov 09 / 1 / 12 / 4 / 1 / 5 / 1 / 24 (20)
Nov 10 / 1 / 13 / 3 / 1 / 1 / 4 / 1 / 2 / 26 (20)
Nov 11 / 1 / 13 / 3 / 3 / 1 / 4 / 1 / 3 / 29 (20)
Nov 12 / 1 / 12 / 5 / 3 / 1 / 5 / 1 / 28 (20)
Nov 13 / 1 / 10 / 2 / 3+ / 1 / 5 / 1 / 23+(18)
Sep 14 / 1 / 13 / 1 / 5 / 1 / 4 / 1 / 26 (20)
Notes:
In 04 and 05 the learner pipers were incorrectly attributed to the registered strength – taking into account this and the honorary pipers the figures in brackets give a more realistic picture of band strength.
· Pipe Major: Iain McNeill
· Active pipers: Pipe Sergeant Iain Russell, Pipe Corporal Alasdair Macleod, Campbell de Burgh, Martin Nolan, Pete Russell, Ben Sutton, Rob Connell, George Woods, Jim Wright, Dorothy Rochester, Alison Mallinson, Gordon Phillips and Alan Cowie.
· Drummers: Drum Sergeant Dave White (S), Drum Corporal Joe Layden(S), Rob Millar (B), John Bibby (S), Chris Day (S), Digby Wallis (T).
· Honorary piper Jim Garrioch
· Learner pipers: Alan Logan, Bruce Wilson, David Gover, Ian Coleman and Joel Keen
· Regular guest players: Charles Gray, Verna Acres (since joined Oct 14)
Table C - Income and Expenditure for the Year to the end of September 2014
11/12 / 12/13 / 13/14Income
gig / 2,430.00 / 2,625.00 / 3,040.00
Foreign gig / 0.00 / 418.74 / 387.76
Burns Supper / 716.00 / 710.00 / 1,016.50
Interest / 2.07 / 1.38 / 1.29
Misc / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
QM / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
DR / 0.00 / 205.00 / 0.00
CDs / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
Donation / 0.00 / 0.00 / 40.00
Total Income / 3,148.07 / 3,960.12 / 4,485.55
Outgo
QM / 274.14 / 445.20 / 885.39
PM / 294.77 / 734.00 / 954.39
DR / 261.00 / 532.00 / 0.00
Burns Supper / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
Travel Expenses / 0.00 / 147.54 / 406.84
Hall / 1,187.00 / 1,780.00 / 3,965.00
subs / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
Insurance / 788.59 / 862.72 / 958.80
Website / 0.00 / 120.00 / 72.00
Foreign gig / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
Training / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
CDs / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
Bank Charges / 0.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
Misc / 39.00 / 0.00 / 0.00
Total Outgo / 2,844.50 / 4,621.46 / 7,242.42
Profit/(Loss) / 303.57 / -661.34 / -2,756.87
Closing Balance / 5,498.01 / 4,836.67 / 2,079.80
It should be noted that QE have put the hall fees up each year for the last couple of years by £5- it is now £55 per week. So the increases have been more than 10% each year.
Table D - Band Kit at September 2014 replacement cost using 2014 prices
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