Concert at St Michaels 17th March 2012
Congratulations to everyone involved in the presentation of this concert. I thought the Sinfonia were brilliant, and I think the choir performed brilliantly as well, and that we more than held our own! From my seat in the middle of the action it is difficult to imagine quite how it all sounded from the cheap seats at the back, but from the few comments fed back to me I think the general impression was favourable. Congratulations especially to Peter, for bringing out the best in choir and orchestra; but also to Ann and her dream team for the setting up (accomplished in record time), and also the restoration of the church furniture to its perfect alignment at the end of the evening.
Questionnaire Results
Thank you also to those 28 members of the audience who completed the questionnaire that was enclosed with the programme. Results were as follows:
Qu 1: We distributed 1500 leaflets house to house in Bramhall last weekend. Did you come tonight as a result of receiving one of these leaflets? Yes 8 No 17 No response 3
Qu 2: Did you come tonight to support friends or family who are members of the Barnby Choir, or of Cheshire Sinfonia? Yes (Barnby) 11 Yes (Sinfonia) 2 Yes (both) 3 Yes (not specified) 6 No 6
Qu 3: Did you come as a result of seeing any of our advertising (posters, flyers, newspaper or local webpage)? No 23 No response 2 Yes 2 (poster in local shop 1, flyer given to me by friend 1)
Qu 4: Did you come after visiting our website? No 23 Yes 1 ("it's good!") No response 3
Qu 5: Have you any suggestions about how we might make attending a Barnby Choir concert a more pleasurable experience? Many thanks to those 5 brave souls who shared their ideas with us. To the respondent who wrote "serve wine", I hope he or she did find the wine counter at the interval, but the questions to whom (the choir? the audience? the conductor??) and when (before, during or after the performance?) come to mind........
Other suggestions concerned the balance between the orchestra and choir (including the extremist view of "no orchestra, thanks"), the need for the choir to appear to be enjoying what they are doing and to appear to know what they are singing about, and believe in it; more engagement with the audience, by way of commentary or anecdote from the conductor or a member of the choir; more friendliness "front of house"; and the desire of the audience to feel "part of it".
Qu 6: Would you like to know more about the choir, and have your name added to our mailing list? 5 members of the audience left their contact details.
These responses will be used to inform the future direction of our publicity, though we must be careful not to read too much into the response of a fairly small sample. Nonetheless, I am pleasantly surprised by the apparent sucess of the leaflet drop, which will be all the greater if those 8 who came to this concert enjoyed it enough to be minded to come to future concerts as well. Thank you again to the team of leaflet droppers - I hope you feel the outcome merited the energy you expended!
The matter of improving our rapport and engagement with our audience is I think also one to which we should pay particular attention. If you, the reader, have any thoughts on this questionnaire which you would like to share with me, the Committee, and other readers of this blog, please post a comment. Click on the green (number)comments at the bottom of this page. You can add a comment anonymously if you don't wish to be identified!
Doug
