2021-03-31-accounts

BRECON BEACONS MUSIC TRUST

Registered Charity Number – 1172155

Annual Report

and accounts for the year ended

31 March 2021

INDEX

	Page
Information about the Charity	3
Charity Structure, Governance and Management	4
Objectives, Public benefit, Activity Overview	5
Financial Overview	6
Report from the Chair of the Trustees, Reviews	7
Income and expenditure account	10
External examiner’s report	12

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Information about the charity

Charity Name : Brecon Beacons Music Trust

Registration Number : 1172155 Registered address : Hendre, Merthyr Cynog, Brecon, LD3 9SG

Trustees during the period :

Anne Morgan (Chair)

Peter Brock (retired January 2021)

Dorcas Slaney (Treasurer)

Andrew Sutherland

Cornelia Rahdes (appointed February 2021)

Bank:

Lloyds Bank, 38 High Street, Brecon, LD3 7AR

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Charity Structure, Governance and Management

Originally established in 2012 as a registered charity (1146283) governed by a trust deed, in 2017 Brecon Beacons Music Trust changed its constitution and on 20 March 2017 was registered as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), number 1172155. The Brecon Beacons Music Trust delivers the annual Brecon Baroque Festival and supports the chamber ensemble, Brecon Baroque, where appropriate.

The Brecon Beacons Music Trust was managed during the period by the four Trustees. No Trustee was paid for their work as board members during the year. The Artistic Director of Brecon Baroque Festival is Rachel Podger. The festival is delivered by the Festival Producer Alison Giles and Marketing and PR Consultant Kate Gedge, supported by a small team of freelance events managers. The Trustees are also actively involved as volunteers in the running of the festival. Brecon Baroque, the regularly featured ensemble / orchestra is managed separately by a professional agent, Percius Management, which also manages Rachel Podger.

Methods for Recruitment of Trustees

The Chair and Trustees of Brecon Beacons Music Trust put forward names of suitably qualified people, whom they know to be interested and to have relevant experience to assist the organisation, for discussion by the Trustees as possible candidates for election. New Trustees – if they have not done so in any event – are encouraged to attend the Brecon Baroque Festival each year and to familiarise themselves with the duties of a Trustee with guidance from the Charity Commission and Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations (PAVO).

Trustees’ activities

The Trustees meet at least four times per year and oversee the running, financial and artistic management of The Brecon Baroque Festival, which takes place annually in October, and associated musical events with particular reference to its objectives. Since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, meetings have been held online rather than in person.

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The Objectives and Activities of Brecon Beacons Music Trust

• (i) The advancement of public appreciation and knowledge of classical music through the promotion of live performance of the highest standard including the Brecon Baroque Festival and Brecon Baroque Ensemble;

• (ii) The promotion of musical education, knowledge and performance skills of children and young people in Powys and beyond;

• (iii) Such other charitable purposes beneficial to the public consistent with the objects above as the trustees in their absolute discretion determine.

Public Benefit

Brecon Beacons Music Trust increases access to high quality live music by bringing internationally acclaimed musicians to a small mid-Wales town and providing affordable tickets in well-known local venues. In attracting significant cultural tourism it also supports the local economy, while its education programme provides valuable training and performance opportunities for young musicians in Powys and the UK conservatoires. The community programme, including workshops and performances, ensures that the Festival benefits as wide a range of local people as possible, including those with disabilities and those who have limited access to high quality music and arts experiences.

OVERVIEW 2020-21

The 2020 Brecon Baroque Festival was produced as an online festival because of the Covid19 pandemic. Instead of planning for a live programme, we filmed the world premiere of a specially commissioned new arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for nine instruments, plus supporting interview and talk events with Rachel Podger and the arranger of the Goldbergs, Chad Kelly. Chad is an emerging director, keyboardist and arranger who appeared for the first time at the festival in 2019, with enormous success. Author Horatio Clare was also featured.

The filming took place in Brecon Cathedral, to maintain the festival’s sense of place, in August 2020. The four online events, all heavily focused on Chad’s new arrangement, premiered over what should have been the live festival weekend, October 23 to 25. The

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films remained available to view for ticket buyers until the end of January 2021, to enable the festival Christmas gift package to be sold.

A total of just under 600 tickets was sold, of which the majority were for the four event Festival Pass. Gross income through the online ticket provider, Eventbrite, totalled over £8,000 and there was a significant number of direct payments to view by bank transfer, often with an additional donation. These levels suggest a number of individual event ‘views’ of approximately 2,500 – 3,000.

New Friends and Patrons were gained as a result of going online, and there was a considerable amount of personal giving associated with the online festival. Income derived from a newly instituted JustGiving appeal went into a designated Festival Futures Fund, which has also received other significant individual gifts made direct to BBF.

BBF had no online presence previously apart from its website and social media. Commissioning the arrangement from Chad Kelly and making it the focus of such a new enterprise was ambitious but rewarding.

Financials

The Trustees are extremely grateful to the public funders, trusts and foundations, individuals and sponsors whose generous support has made our artistic programme during this year possible. Public and trust funders for the period included the Arts Council of Wales, Mid Wales Music Trust, Brecon Town Council, The Gibbs Trust, National Lottery Awards for All, Community Foundation Wales / Powys Community Endowment Fund, D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, the Gwendoline and Margaret Davies Charity, The Moondance Foundation and Fidelio Charitable Trust. We were also fortunate to secure Welsh Government Cultural Recovery Fund support.

Brecon Beacons Music Trust and Brecon Baroque Festival is supported by a wide range of income streams and this variety minimises financial risk by ensuring there is never too much dependency on a single funding source. The total income for 2020/21 was £106,599 (£74,310 in 2019/20). The Festival Friends and Patrons scheme raised £5,935 (£4,680 in

2019/20) while funding from trusts and foundations contributed £20,600 (£20,800 in 2019/20) and individual donations £16,400 (£4,896 in 2018/19). Public funding from the Welsh Government Cultural Recovery Fund, Brecon Town Council, the National Lottery and the Arts Council of Wales totalled £46,800 whilst box office income (online festival only) was £8,230 (£23,261 in 2019/20).

At the year end the Trust carried forward funds of £75,688 which puts the charity in a strong position to face the challenges of what remains, as Covid-19 continues to have powerful effects across the UK and world, an uncertain future for performing arts organisations. The trustees have considered and amended the figure to be kept in reserves to £8,000.

Chair’s report for Brecon Baroque Festival 2020

In common with all other branches of the arts, the coronavirus pandemic presented an immense challenge to concert organisers during this year. As mentioned above, the committee decided to go for an on-line festival, as the risks of trying to organise it live were too great. We were fortunate to locate a film crew from Cardiff and filming took place over three days in Brecon Cathedral in August, the safest time we felt we could assemble the nine musicians involved, while observing strict Covid rules. Having not been on line before, the festival was open to a much greater audience than before, not only to patrons, friends and regular attenders, but to listeners world-wide, many of whom were not previously aware of the festival’s existence. The whole process was a steep learning curve for the committee, but one that was extremely well rewarded, and also entirely vindicated, given that Wales went into lockdown the very October weekend the festival would have taken place. It was felt by our large on-line audience that the festival provided a beacon of light in some very dark times. The centerpiece of the festival was a specially commissioned arrangement by Chad Kelly of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for nine instruments. We opened on Friday 23[rd] October with an on-line introduction by Rachel Podger and Chad Kelly, giving some very interesting insights into Bach’s state of mind at the time, and his place in the changing musical styles of the period. In a documentary shown on the Saturday afternoon, Rachel Podger then talked about the background of the festival and the impact it has had on local life in Brecon, and Chad Kelly spoke some more about his arrangement of the variations. Also the author and broadcaster

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Horatio Clare, who was born and brought up locally, related how his experience of walking in Bach’s footsteps in order to research his book A Walk with Bach, deepened his love and understanding of Bach and his music.

The actual performance of the Goldberg variations are so well described in the press review below, that I cannot add anything! Suffice to say, it has been watched and re-watched by a great many people, and the final question and answer session on the Sunday night, bore testimony to their ecstatic reception. We were delighted to receive a 5 star review in The Times, among other similarly positive press reports.

Needless to say, we were unable to carry out our usual school workshops and commitments to the local Adult Learning Disability Centre, nor could we have the Brecon Baroque Festival Orchestra. However these projects are being planned for some time in 2021, when we sincerely hope that the Covid epidemic will be under more control.

Press review:

The Times 26[th] October 2020 Rebecca Franks :

Brecon Baroque Festival review — Bach reimagined in exquisite harmony ★★★★★

This year’s Brecon Baroque Festival began on the same day as Wales’s two-week Covid “fire break”. Luckily, the violinist and artistic director Rachel Podger had already decided to go online. In August she gathered together her merry band of period-instrument musicians to record the main event, a new arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations . Filmed in the sunlit south transept of Brecon Cathedral, it’s a performance to revisit many times – which ticketholders can until the end of January 2021.

The playing was exquisite. From Katy Bircher’s flute, gentle as dappled sun, to Jan Spencer’s earthy bass, the sound was filled with life and texture. When the arranger Chad Kelly embarked on this project, his first thought was to expand Bach’s 1741 piece from solo keyboard to string trio. The forces eventually grew to nine players: flute, oboe, bassoon, two violins, viola, cello, bass and harpsichord. Podger’s violin led the way, but Kelly made brilliant use of them all. Drawing on familiar 18th-century groupings — trio sonata, violin sonata, duet, orchestra and so forth — Kelly skilfully used his palette to illuminate the character of each variation. Flute and bassoon added to Variation 7’s pastoral quality, for instance, while

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the oboe da caccia was wonderfully doleful in Variation 15. Hearing the imitative canons being passed around players amplified the brilliance of Bach’s writing.

Another test is the return of the Aria, which should elicit a sense of arrival, renewal, even redemption — after 30 variations, the last thing you want is for it to fall flat. Here, it sprang forth from the Quodlibet with surprising vigour, played by all the instruments. It was as though the intricate contrapuntal lines of the past 80 minutes had united, like streams joining a river that had finally reached the sea. The effect was glorious.

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Annedd Wen Ljangybi Lampeter Ceredigio SA48 8NB Dorcas S]aney Brecon Beacons M￿icT￿ Date.. 14th January Z022 Brecon BeacoDS Muslc TrnAAccowkts forthe yearw 315t March 2021 The accounts have t*en reviewed forthe financial ￿ri0￿ endi￿ 315t Marth 2021. The accounts lookto be in good order. and reÉlett an accurate represenEauon of the charity's fJrtancia] position. Spedficalty.. The BankAthatysis spreadsbeetentries reconcile Corrertly with the bank accourttstatemeEJt entries. Expenditure i% supported thÈ maln by knvoice%lrÉceipts fDr purchaseslexpenses intunE¢t Income items match those recorded on the bank ststements. I confir]n that l am independeni from Brecon Beacons MusicTnJaand its trustee& Yours SiTkcerely. Mr&Amanda King 12