Good morning, harp guitar fans one and all ~

As the country seems to be falling apart around us this week, here’s a bit of good news to maybe focus on.  Yes, this year’s Harp Guitar Gathering was cancelled due to the corona-virus.  Yes, that was a depressing but nonetheless correct decision to make.  But earlier this week as I lay in bed unable to fall asleep, a realization came to me with great clarity.  That realization was that we most certainly could have a Gathering this year after all – via Zoom!  And so, campers, that’s what will happen.  It will be a short Gathering, to be sure, and certainly won’t be as much fun as usual.  But still worth doing?  Absolutely!  The details are being worked out but here it is so far:

Saturday, October 17th is the day.  1:00 – 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.  That makes it 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM for the west coast of the US and 6:00 PM – midnight in the UK and Belgium.  So as to not be too early or too late for anyone is what we (the HGG Board) figured.

How will this work?  We’ll be able to accommodate up to 100 Zoom attendees.   A Zoom link will be sent out closer to the time.   You’ll simply click the link and follow the prompts and then, like magic – you’ll be at the Gathering.

What will we do?  Well, we’re going to have a Harp Guitar Gathering!  A condensed Gathering, to be sure, but still, it’ll be fun.  There’ll be a bit more, I expect, but at this point, here’s what I can report that will be on the schedule:

• a concert by a wonderful player from the UK who was scheduled to play for us this year until covid-19 came along and altered all of our lives.  His name is Jon Pickard and here is a sample of his great playing.  We’ve rescheduled Jon for next year’s Gathering but now you get to be introduced to him this year after all!
• a Luthier’s Forum organized by Mike Doolin
• a tour of the Miner Museum by Sir Gregory and Lady Jaci
• an Instant Arrangement session whereby several players will have been given the same piece of music 24 hours earlier and now we’ll get to hear what they came up with
• a time for each of us to say hello to our fellow Gatherers and give an update on what’s new in our lives
• our usual finale of The Water Is Wide

So that’s that and is what it is.  No more and no less.  We are going to have HGG18  this year after all.  Although – I’m going to amend that slightly to vHGG18 (v for virtual).  I’ll be in touch with more.  But for now — put October 17th from 1-6 EST on your calendar!  

My next task, I just realized, is to figure out how to make this work if all of you were to attend.  There are more than 200 names on the email list but only room for 100 via the Zoom account I planned to use.  No worries………………….

Continue to stay safe and if possible, sane as well!

Stephen