Come and see what amateur guitarists are achieving in South East Hampshire...we welcome new players - it's very informal!
Workshop's Founder - Derek Hasted - is well-known as a guitar teacher, and known throughout the guitar world as a composer/arranger and for his work with the Hampshire Guitar Orchestra (hago). Derek ran the Workshop from the day it started for 35 years.
Derek moved out of the area to be closer to family, and our new leader is Peter Rogers, a talented local guitarist.
Pictured - Workshop December 1999
Derek founded the Guitar Workshop in 1988 to complement his Adult Education classes and to provide guitarists with the opportunities for music making and friendship that orchestral instrumentalists enjoy.
The Workshop Collection has over 150 accessible trios, quartets and quintets - a musically interesting and varied mix of easy and intermediate lines that we usually play at sight. In fact about 7500 sheets of paper come to our get-togethers!
Half our pieces are for Guitar Ensemble; the remainder are traditional tunes and folk songs which we pluck or strum. Although most bring a Classical Guitar, some also bring a Folk Guitar and mix & match during the evening.
Starting in 1989, we have put on an informal Concert every Christmas, and when Workshop was ten years old, in 1988, we had grown to such a strength that we added a summer Concert too, which included a Souvenir Programme, containing some of the history of Workshop's first 10 years. All our Concerts give their entire proceeds to local charities, and over the years we have raised £80,910 for good causes.
Even new visitors to Workshop - and we welcome many each year - find their efforts contribute to a sound which far exceeds what a solo guitar can manage.
Click on the menu above and see some of our special anniversaries!
Our story continues year on year, and this website came live on 19th September 2004 to record our living history.
Be part of one of Hampshire's largest, friendliest and longest-established Guitar Groups.
Come for a free taster session and see if you like it!