hago News Archives - 2006

December 2006

Everyone in hago wishes all our visitors a Merry Christmas

Our fundraising is up 46% on last year, and that's down to you, the audience - thank you!

The money raised for The Rowans Hospice from our concert at St James Without-the-Priory Gate Church, Southwick is £1000.63 - our charity fundraising total is now £28934.

Our concert at St Nicholas North End raises £340 for Crisis at Christmas and brings our charity fundraising total to £27934

Goodness - what a squeeze to fit us all into the Church in Southwick on November 30th for our Rowan's Hospice concert - it was a sell-out! The money raised for The Rowans Hospice is £1000.63 - our charity fundraising total is now £28934.

November 2006

Welcome to all the visitors who read about us in Hampshire Now Magazine - can we tempt you to our December Concert in aid of Crisis at Christmas ?

A Fox-Hunting forum has decided to hot-link one of our photos so we pay to serve it up on their website. Not that it worked - we caught 'em at it - but honestly - that's theft, for fox sake!

A major reorganisation of our website may have left Google pointing you to pages that we've archived away, but we're confident Google will settle back down, and until it does, why not see what we've added - a photo gallery

October 2006

Our charity fundraising total reaches £27586

Welcome to visitors from the Oasis Fanatics Forum - with this level of interest, we may have to do an Oasis cover some time!

Our concert in aid of Age Concern was a great success - good to see so many people enjoying our programme.

Another "Hints and Tips" article for you - this time a few words on playing faster (now moved to our Musical Director's site)

Our charity fund-raising total climbs to £27213

September 2006

Goodness - suddenly we have a new guitar and a new player!

Another out-take!

What a glorious sunny day at the Birdman of Bognor

Read a short interview with our Musical Director Derek Hasted about the Hantsweb Web Awards on the Hantsweb website (opens in new window)

August 2006

How can you make a contrabass sound better with some plastic and sticky tape? It's a bit more scientific than Blue Peter, but just as much fun! See the photos, hear the soundclips

It was good to meet many other guitarists at the West Dean Guitar Festival - happy plucking to all of you!

July 2006

Our charity fund-raising total climbs to £27173

Cambridge Guitar Orchestra teamed up with us for our annual joint Concert.
Talking of which, Graham Anthony Devine was in the audience - Graham is, of course renowned for his superlative technique and his growing catalogue of excellent CDs. He's playing locally - Saturday 29th July at St John's Chapel, St John's Street in Chichester. Tickets on the door are £9 (£7 conc). For more information ring 020 8968 7491.

Hampshire Area Guitar Orchestra becomes the Hampshire Guitar Orchestra - story...

If you came to our Alton concert and are interested in another concert local to that area, then go along to St Andrew's Parish Church Farnham on Saturday July 15th at 7pm, hand over £7 and enjoy an evening with Classical Guitarist Ben Pugsley, in concert with Reichard Veitch and Michael Kruk - tel 01252 727317

Talking of Alton - photos from our concert have arrived here

June 2006

Our charity fund-raising total climbs to £26511

Our concert in Alton raised £928.91 for Project Mali

A busy week on our website - lots of visitors since our concerts at Waterlooville and Alton. Welcome to you all!

The Waterlooville Music Festival is in full flow - we send our best wishes to everyone who is playing - we really enjoyed playing in such a packed Church on 13th June!

We had to chuckle - our old name still won't lie down and die! We're in tonight's The News as "Havant Area Guitar Orchestra", but trust us, it'll be Hampshire Area Guitar Orchestra that plays for you on Tuesday 13th!

hago.org.uk is 6 years old this month and has grown from 8 pages to 546 pages. Do join us as we celebrate our Webbing Anniversary!

May 2006

We all wined and dined in style at our Open Rehearsal yesterday, along with a number of local guitarists.

Amount raised for charity climbs to £25582

May 14th - if you missed yesterday's concert with Amanda Cook and WSGC, there are some soundclips here

hago.org.uk's success in the Hantsweb Web Awards is featured in the Parish Magazine in Bedhampton

The Bristol Spanish Guitar Centre is now selling Rod Capper Guitars.
Why tell you that? Because Bruce Paine played one in our joint concert last July - see photos of Bruce and Rod and a video clip too.

We rightly panned the Spinnaker Tower - our local Millennium project - for the embarrassingly hopeless way it opened 6 years late. But once opened we were impressed and our MD set up a gallery of photos from the Spinnaker Tower so that if you couldn't get there, you could enjoy our local attraction from afar. The Tower received many more visitors than they ever expected, so what did they do? Very quietly put the price up. It's no longer value-for-money, and their bare-faced greed is yet another embarrassment right on hago's doorstep. Enjoy our MD's photos instead - they're free!

April 2006

The first of what we hope will be several articles about ensemble techniques has arrived on our Musical Director's website

March 2006

Another Open Rehearsal - we're delighted to welcome guitarists and guitar teachers from all over the area to another evening of music and fun, completely free of charge!

Our website is mentioned in despatches in The News and in Hampshire Now Magazine

Our March 11th concert brings our total raised for charity to £25577

We're honoured and delighted to win the Hantsweb Award for Best Special Interest Website, presented on March 7th. Story and photos from the Web Awards ceremony here...

Virtually all of our website meets Bobby Priority 2 (Level AA) for accessibility and some pages are level AAA.

Well done to all the local guitarists who triumphed in the Portsmouth Music Festival on March 4th. We send special congratulations to Peter Buekers, Richard Evans and Mike Warin, winners of the hago cup

A warm welcome to the many visitors arriving via the Hantsweb site - we have concerts in Cosham, Chichester, Alton and Portsmouth soon - do come if you can.

February 2006

25th February is hago's 7th birthday.
Birthdays mean cakes (especially in hago!) - our rehearsal on 23rd February most definintely required a suitably large cake-break - photo at the foot of this page...

Our website meets Bobby Priority 1 (Level A) for accessibility. We're working to move to Level AA to make life easier for visitors with visual problems. 193 of our pages are now Level AA or AAA.

Our website is through to the final 3 in the Hantsweb Web Awards Special Interest section. We'd cross our fingers, but it makes playing guitar even more tricky than usual!

Our charity fund-raising total is now £25381

More free music! Try our easy Sailor's Hornpipe for 3 guitars, mandolins or violins

In response to a request, we've produced a table of the pitch ranges of all our guitars

January 2006

Welcome to visitors from Google Groups, where links to our different sizes of guitar have appeared!

We're pleased to have another long-service award ceremony

Our website served 385,215 pages last year

Happy New Year from us all here in hago!