Welcome to the West Wight Arts Association

West Wight Arts Association January 2025 concert

West Wight Arts Association’s first concert of 2025 will be held on January 11th in Freshwater Memorial Hall and will be given by the virtuoso Sicilian pianist Giuseppe Guarrera starting at 7.00pm.

Prize winner of Montreal, Cleveland, Rubinstein and Viotti piano competitions, Giuseppe is based in Berlin but currently on tour in China. He was selected by the Young Classical Artists’ Trust in 2018 and came to Freshwater in 2020 where he delighted us with his outstanding pianism and engagement with the audience.

He will play two sonatas by Scarlatti, Handel’s suite in F major, Beethoven’s sonata Les Adieux and in the second half Schumann’s Phantasiestücke opus 12, Liszt’s arrangement of Wagner’s Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde and finish with Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz number 1.

Tickets at £16.00 (students and children £2.00) are available from our ticket page or Totland Parish Office on 756028 (booking fee applies).

Please note that the concert starts at 7.00pm. Book now for a real musical treat to start 2025.

Steinway Grand Piano

The Steinway ‘B’ grand piano in the Memorial Hall, Freshwater, which belongs to West Wight Arts Association, is available for hire by arrangement with WWAA.

Please check the availability of the Memorial Hall with the administrator Debbie McAteer on memohall1960@gmail.com or 01983 752956 in the first instance and then email Richard Wilkins on wilkins.r@btinternet.com for further details.

West Wight Arts Association Bursary for young music students on the Island

Twelve young Island musicians have been awarded grants to further their musical studies by West Wight Arts Association.

The recipients range from 11 to 18 and played a wide variety of instruments or sang to a panel of WWAA trustees on Saturday February 24th. They also answered questions about their music making and what they would spend an award on; their answers ranged from help with funding further music lessons to better instruments or equipment.

The panel were treated to performances on piano, saxophone, drums, clarinet, oboe, violin, flute and voice from students from six different schools on the Island. The judges were deeply impressed by the standards achieved and the aspirations expressed by the musicians.

“ We had a wonderful response to our initial appeal for Island music students and it was very hard to shortlist applicants to start with. Then on the audition day it was very difficult to decide who our major award winners should be as the standard was so high, but we were able to give everyone something.”

— Pam Wedgwood - Organiser

“The concert was one of the best I have been to anywhere, the gut stringing added to their brilliant interpretation of the Mozart which was thrilling.”