Hertford Corn Exchange - Essex Guitar Orchestra

This one was first mentioned in July, at the Essex Guitar Orchestra's Gt Wymondley Open Gardens show, and eight of us said we were up for a charity Spanish Night in Hertford. We rehearsed 17 pieces, including "Y Viva Espana," "Guantanamera," and "Spanish Flea" along with a number of pieces I'd never heard of. We squeezed in half a dozen rehearsals round players' houses between July and October, and that takes some doing when you think that we had to get through the Summer holiday season, and fit it all in around full Essex Guitar Orchestra rehearsals.

And so, on 10 October 2008, the Spanish Night subset of the Essex Guitar Orchestra descended on Hertford Corn Exchange where they'd sold around a hundred tickets. We played the full first half of our set, and I played a couple of solo items (the anonymous Romanza, and the Soleares from Joaquin Turina's Hommaje a Tarrega). One of our group does flamenco dancing, so she brought another dancer and their guitarist (he did a couple of solo items too) to do some demos and to teach people some basic moves. They went down really well and could have had the audience on the floor learning basic moves all night if the audience had let them, so our second guitar set was shorter than we expected. We encored with a second and third run through of Y Viva Espana. Huge round of applause all round

Overall, we went down a storm, and we all said we'd take that show out on the road again. It was a great night. Ole!