Label owner will crash-diet for sponsor cash

Our friend Martin Anderson runs Toccata Classics for anything but profit. He publishes the works of unknown composers and artists, often bringing them into the mainstream. Toccata is a truly essential label.

Martin has never been a lean and hungry record man, as you can see.

Now, he’s going on a sponsored slim to keep the label alive. Let’s back him, pound for pound.

Last night, he had his last drink of the year until Christmas. Here’s the appeal:

Greetings

My mum has been nagging me for years about losing weight, and I promised my partner Yodit, just before she died last year, that I would indeed do so. Making Yodit happy was incentive enough while she was alive, but now, sadly, I need another one, and so, trying to turn the occasion to some advantage, I am going to try to convert my large belly into music.

That is, I am going on a sponsored slim for the last four months of 2016 and the money I raise will go to help my label Toccata Classics with its programme of recordings of rare music. You can imagine that releasing albums of rare repertoire is not a path to wealth, and Toccata Classics needs all the help it can get. So I am hoping that you, my friends and colleagues, will sponsor me by however much or little as you like for each pound of weight I lose between 1 September and 31 December. Since I never do anything in half-measures, you might like to know that I went on sponsored slims in 1980 and 1982, over the two-month duration of those years’ Proms concerts and lost 32 and 30 lbs respectively, raising money for the Havergal Brian and Robert Simpson Societies. And now I have far more to lose – and far more composers who need help. So please click on this link to be taken to the page of the Toccata website where you can make a pledge. You’ll be e-mailed at the beginning of next year with the result – and I’ll send out occasional messages in the meantime to let you know how I am getting on or, rather, how much I am getting off.

Many thanks for your support,