JoAnne Connaughton

Dear Mr Nicolson,

Thank you for your email and directions to the newsletter, which I read with interest.

I have never been able to attend any of your functions: when I was Director of Music at St Marie's Cathedral I always had to work on Maundy Thursday, and now it is a little far to come for dinner, but I appreciate the contact.

I live in the Bahamas where I recently became the Principal Conductor of the Bahamas Concert Orchestra. The population of the Bahamas is roughly equivalent to that of Rotherham but over a third of that population is spread over many different islands with the remaining two thirds being resident in the capital. The Bahamas is a very musical country with a marching band on every corner, but there is no tradition of string playing. Traditionally the strings for the orchestra (which is an amateur orchestra) have come from the ex-pat population. However, the ex-pat population is both radically declining and changing in nature. It used to comprise hundreds of British teachers, nurses, accountants etc. but the Bahamas now generates their own teachers and other professionals and so no longer has a need for such a large number of foreign workers. The bulk of the skilled foreign population comes now in the form of engineers and skilled builders in response to huge development projects.

Not surprisingly, the orchestra is now becoming chronically short of string players!

A couple of years ago the Bahamian government was given a shipment of stringed instruments as a gift from the government of China. These instruments were sent to one of the local senior high schools to create a string programme. Unfortunately, they did not come with any string teachers and so have largely gone unused, or else trumpet teachers are valiantly trying to guide young students in the art of violin playing! A far from perfect scenario.

I want to regenerate the orchestra and create a vehicle for producing string players to sustain it. If I do not do this now, the orchestra will undoubtedly die in the very near future. This would be tragic as orchestras are such a rare thing in the Caribbean.

I am launching a string apprenticeship programme that will collect together the string students from around the island along with some recent school graduates (who had to leave their instrument in school when they left), and some adults who learned a stringed instrument in the past and then gave it up. I will collect all possible players together and put them with skilled string teachers (of which there are only a very tiny number left).

They will receive tuition 3 times per week in a sectional grouping (violin I, violin II, viola, cello and bass) over a four month period before joining the orchestra for the first time to perform in a gala concert in May 2007.

The orchestra, with massed choir, is going to perform 'The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace' by Karl Jenkins. It is a spectacular work and one that I hope will convince the government to fund an ongoing string programme for the future.

So I am sure that you have guessed what is coming next. Please would you circulate this information to OEA members to see if any of them would like to support this programme.

The Bahamas is a beautiful country spread over 700 islands and cays, about 35 of which are inhabited, with a population of just under 300 000 people. The Bahamas is a member of the Commonwealth and classified as a developing country, in part because it gained its independence just over 30 years ago which really makes it in its infancy in self governance. Statistically the Bahamas has a very high GDP which makes it ineligible for much international funding, but this statistic is somewhat skewed by things like the off-shore banking industry and a large number of millionaire residents who live here to avoid paying taxes. Having said that, the Bahamas does not have any real poverty. It is an honest working population of low to middle income.

In defence of the millionaire population, they have created an enormous foundation to support locals, but they have very specific criteria, and their money goes almost exclusively to sending young people abroad to study.

If there are any Old Edwardians interested in supporting this project, there are several ways that it could be done: