It’s always the same after Christmas and New Year. We sit back, take a breather and look back over the previous year.

It has been an exciting time for Gateway FM: our application for a full time community licence has been in the hands of the independent regulator – Ofcom – for over a year, our roadshow has been active in ensuring we give support to a wide range of different organisations and that we have a presence at events throughout the area. We have continued to deliver training courses designed to help media students and also to give other, younger students, an awareness of community and their rôles and responsibilities within it.

It has been a year of great fun, hard work and a valuable learning experience for us all. We have added a local news element to our output on both website and FM: we are accredited to deliver radio journalism OCN courses and aim to build a strong core news team. If you are a trained journalist (radio, TV or press) with a little spare time to give us, please give me a call and help us develop the team skills.

Our volunteer members have been wonderful: for without their enthusiasm and involvement, there could be no such thing as Gateway FM, or indeed community radio. We have welcomed loads of new members, listeners and contributors and have had to say farewell and thanks to a few who have, of necessity, moved on.

Above all, Gateway FM is a rather different style of radio station. It does exist to do more than simply play music, although there is plenty of it. The station’s aim is to serve its local communities by representing them on air, by giving local people a voice on local issues and by reporting fairly, accurately and without bias.

Of course, it seeks to serve different tastes in music and to that end intends to involve more local schools, clubs, groups and performers through the encouragement of  live performance and the reaching out to a broader community. Please contact us if you would like to have your work aired to a wider audience locally.

Please do contact us if you would like to be part of your local radio, whether as a sports correspondent, journalist, researcher, planner, editor, receptionist, presenter, member of the roadshow team or simply as someone interested in supporting their local station and helping it improve.

Membership is just £1 per year – we don’t want to price membership at a level that could exclude many people – and gives access to various of our training activities in order that we can seek to enable the quality of our output (though involving people working for love rather than money) to hold its own alongside that of professional stations (i.e. those where staff are paid).

You might well wonder what this has to do with classical music. The answer is simply this: I would like to talk to enthusiasts who might like to share their passion with others. I would like to talk to instrumentalists and singers, to opera, madrigal, chant, military or sacred music lovers. Perhaps you are tuned more to Telemann or Vivaldi, to the great Romantic composers or orchestral music for film and theatre: please get in touch.

You may have a wonderful collection of some of the finest recordings by some of the greatest orchestras  conducted by the maestros of yesteryear or a wealth of memories and anecdotes from your musical background: simply get in touch with me.

My email address is yvonne.williams@gatewayfm.com. The station telephone number is 01268 521299.

This could lead to a guest appearance, an on-air chat or to your presenting part, or all of, ‘Sounds Familiar’.  As you know, music can reach people of any age or cultural tradition, so please don’t think: I’m too old, or too young, or too shy or that my accent is a bit ‘iffy’. If you have a love for music that you would like to share, then we can help you make it happen.

Now that the excitement over the Christmas number one in the pop charts has finally subsided, I find myself reflecting on music of different types and comparing it with other expressions of art. For example, in fashion there is an apparent difference between trendy fashion, haute couture and style.

Trendy fashion is a sort of uniform presented to purchasers as a way of expressing their individuality and perhaps an element of protest against convention. It is ephemeral, frequently absurdly impractical and, in truth, a manipulated trend that brings certain colours, fabrics and styles to the fore in readiness for each bout of spending.

Yet certain styles remain stylish because they answer the design requirement for form, fit and function in a manner that is always elegant.

Perhaps therein lies the parallel with pop music. Its appeal seems too often generated by factors bearing little relationship to artisitic merit, but often to the manipulation of a market. The X Factor winner is undoubtedly talented, but would his cover version of a song have received any attention from buyers had he not been on television. Would the anti-Cowell number one have been purchased by many, had it not been for manipulation of the market to develop a protest vote.

Of course, there have been many examples of pop music that have not only reflected the times of their composition, but also pass from transient pop culture into a more durable awareness and regard. So it is with classical music: far more has been composed and forgotten than we care to imagine. That which has inherent greatness, whether of expression, suggestion or inspiration has survived. So too with music of other genres: folk, jazz, country, swing, blues.

And all these can provide inspiration for future pop: some trivial, some of value. Which is why I hope you can enjoy Sounds Familiar: a gentle wander through the music we have long loved.