Those of you who have been to The Imperfect Orchestra (TIO)’s performances will know that they are special - unique events, ambitious in scope, and with a different line-up of musicians (and non-musicians!) every time.
Since we’re celebrating our ten-year anniversary this year, it’s been time to take stock and to look into the future of TIO and what it hopes to achieve over the next decade. Our previous projects have been immense fun to produce, but have also taken a lot work to conceive, organise, project manage, teach, rehearse, source equipment, and perform. We want to be able to keep doing that work, to keep bringing musicians and amateurs together, to keep providing interesting and ambitious performances, and to be able to sustain that for the future.
So, while TIO has never been about making money (although we’re very grateful for the bits of funding we’ve received for certain projects over the years), it does cost money to keep it going. This is an opportunity to support us to continue our work, by getting yourself some Decade merch and mementoes or simply buying a ticket to this special performance, so that TIO can do what it does best - put on a great show involving local people and providing a platform for musicians to participate in something different, exciting and perhaps ordinarily inaccessible, as well as nurturing those who fancy a go at being a musician but haven't had the opportunity before.
We will use the money for, primarily, covering our studio costs for the next year. This includes the space we use to store our huge range of instruments, which are essential to have available so that people can participate in what we do. We have also been turning the studio into a recording space, and this money will help us complete this work so that we can begin making recordings of our projects so far. One of the wonderful things about TIO is its willingness to create original, experimental, ambitious scores and to pop up and perform these, often only once, but given the amount of work that goes into writing and performing each of these, it seems a shame to let them be lost after each performance. We’ve recently recorded the score for our first ever project - Home (2013) - as a taster of this process and we’re so pleased with the results that we’re offering this recording as one of the great pledge rewards for this crowdfunder. There are also T-shirts and hand-printed lino posters, created by local supporters of TIO.
Whatever you can give will ensure we can continue TIO for many years to come. Thank you!