More members needed as times remain challenging for Chichester Music Society

They start the autumn on September 13 in their home at the University of Chichester with Paul Guinery (piano) – English Light Music, a recital which comes at an important and challenging time for CMS.

Chairman Chris Hough confirmed the society was looking for ways to increase attendances, with numbers currently down on 2021: “We have got a very good programme coming up for the rest of this year with some very strong recitals. Finding performers is not a problem with the performers fitting in smaller fry like us when they are in London and they can get together three or four dates for a little southern tour to include us.”

The problem is finding the audiences: “We notice this ourselves when we go to concerts, somewhere like Glyndebourne for instance and you see that there are seats there empty that would usually be full. Everybody in the performing arts is finding that there is a bit of a reluctance to get back to the live performances from the audiences.

"We have got our core membership and usually we try to get up to about 100 members or so (paying in advance for the season), but increasingly we're also getting people coming on the night. We have got involved with ticketsource and we are getting a mix of people who are coming along to attend just single events.

“But the trouble is that clubs like ours, which are about classical music, tend to attract the the older generations and the older generations are getting older! We are finding it more difficult to recruit new members. We aren't doing particularly well, to be honest. We like to get 100 people but we're down to something in the 50s rather than in the 70s or 80s where we should be. A rule of thumb is that we try to cover the fees for the performers, and we are lucky that we have quite a few people from the university in the mix and so the fees are reduced.”

The society also benefits from a reciprocal arrangement with the University of Chichester; the society holds its meetings there free of charge and in return supports students with bursaries and instruments.

“We are very fortunate in that respect so certainly for a year or two we probably won't be particularly worried, and we do have reserves. But in the long run we have to raise the revenue to pay for the artists.

“It's important to get the programme right, to get young performers in and to come up with a programme that is attractive. But the effects of the pandemic have gone on rather longer than we thought. If we didn’t have the reciprocal arrangement with the university, we would be worried. But at the end of the day if we can't start to get more members, then that really would start to seem terminal for us. But we still remain very positive. We've got a full programme through to the end of this year and we are putting together a programme for 2023. We're just finalising things for next year. I think maybe if we're still in this situation this time next year then that might be when the crunch starts to come.” www.chichestermusicsociety.org.uk