Virtual Chromatic Weekend

For the second year running, COVID restrictions have meant our Celebration of Chromatic Harmonica (Weekend) was a free to attend Zoom event, with the difference this year that it was also live streamed on YouTube, benefitting viewers in parts of the world with lower bandwidth. This has had the benefit of enabling us to present some of the best international harmonica players in the world, and, as you will read, we had twelve of the very best. The audience donated generously, and we were pleased to be able to remunerate the artists significantly more than their minimum guarantee. Each day kicked off with an introductory video from Roger, VIRTUAL remarks from our chair, and a recorded video message from the great Sigmund Groven, who had other CHROMATIC commitments so he could not appear in person. We tried to present a balanced programme, and, in the view of all of those I have spoken to, we achieved it and WEEKEND it was an outstanding event. The event organisation went seamlessly - at least from the viewer’s perspective, REVIEW we had one or two small crises, which were overcome. This was due in no small part to the cohesion of our event team, which numbered ten. Special thanks to David Hambly, Membership the technical team of Ben Reese - Zoom and YouTube host; Roger Trobridge - video creator (still editing Zoom videos to go on the website); and Trevor Yeo - up-front and in-event artist technical Secretary advisor. Richard Taylor arranged the raffle. Neil Warren did our innovative Jam sessions. And the MCs - Patrick Byrne, Pete Hewitt, Sam Spranger and Hilvert Scheper ensured variety for the audience so that they did not see the same MC the whole time. I told you a little about the artists in the previous Harmonica World issue so will not elaborate except to say that we aimed for a varied programme and our artists ranged from the young, brilliant, two time world champion Cy Leo from Hong Kong to Dror Adler from

Israel who has a marked sense of humour. To ensure continuity between sessions we had Roger’s wonderful videos and were able to show a different one between each session. Rick Epping did our two Maintenance workshops, one on basic Chromatic Maintenance in the main Zoom room and another in a breakout room for those with specific questions for Rick whose expertise is unquestionable.

We were supported in the raffle by our sponsors Easttop, Hohner,

Integral, Kongsheng, Seydel, and Suzuki who each donated a chromatic harmonica or other valuable prize. Two of the sponsors, Hohner and Seydel, requested ‘Trade Stalls’. Hohner treated us to a factory tour (by video) and Seydel launched a brand new slideless chromatic harmonica - the ‘Nonslider

Chromatic De Luxe Steel’, the first batch of which sold out within hours. We produced some scores and backing tracks for the physical event, and we used these for Neil Warren’s chromatic jam. They were made available online for practice ahead of the event and the audience was encouraged to play along (muted) with Neil. They also had the opportunity to play their own piece unmuted. I mentioned breakout rooms: besides Rick’s workshop one we had a ‘Bar’ where people could go and chat to one another. We also had a ‘Green Room’ which Trevor used before each session to ‘advise’ the artist and to which each artist went after their session to chat to the audience in the room.

I hope we have many of the same team organising the Virtual

Festival on 15th - 17th October, which will also feature our AGM.

Please attend and make this a huge success too!