Intimate Acoustic Music Concerts Raise £700 for School Music Room

Since November last year Louise Colam has been running a series of intimate music concerts (I.A.M) in Henley to raise money for a new music room at Valley Road School and to promote local musicians. Each month there has been concerts in people’s homes and at Athlete Services in town.

We were delighted to drop into the last intimate house concert last week of this series when Rosina Buck and Bronte Shande from Circe’s Diner sang some rootsy tunes which have influences from Country, Americana, Folk and Pop music from their new EP, ‘October’.  Rosina, Bronte and their other 2 band members; Ben Tunnicliffe and Pete Catada are very excited about performing at Glastonbury this year. After a short break, Tom Michell and band member Pete Thomas from Tom Michell Trio performed their set of brilliant rhythm and blues music.  Tom said, “I haven’t done a house gig before and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Pete and I really enjoyed it though. It was a really nice setting with a friendly intimate atmosphere and I would definitely do it again.”

Louise said, “I started up the evenings to raise money for the Happy Valley room, a music space for Valley road pupils and community space and thought that music would be the perfect way to do that.  The parents have been very supportive of the evenings and we’ve made over £700 over 7 house concerts and had the pleasure of being entertained by some outstanding musicians.  I’ll continue putting on house concerts whenever I can and run a monthly night at Athletes Services on the last Sunday of the month to help out the artists who have helped out the school!  It’s been an absolute pleasure to do something a bit different, raise money for my son’s school and make new friends along the way!”