THERE’S a feast of festive music in store at Huddersfield Town Hall courtesy of Colne Valley Male Voice Choir next weekend.
For the choir will have as its guests on Sunday, December 16, (7.15pm) its own young singers, the Colne Valley Boys.
But they will also be playing host once again to top-line brass band, Brighouse and Rastrick Band.
This is very much a rematch of previous years when this has proved a winning line-up where audiences are concerned.
The Colne Valley men, along with the boys’ choir, will be conducted by their musical director, Thom Meredith.
The accompanists will be Keith Swallow for the main choir and Chris Pulleyn for the boys.
The band is conducted this year by Garry Cutt. Dr Simon Lindley will compere the concert and will also be at the organ.
The choir will be joined for two items by flautist and piccolo player Heather Askew.
Heather is in her final year at Greenhead College and plays with Kirklees Youth Symphony Orchestra.
She will play the flute obligato in the Arnold Bax piece, Now Is The Time Of Christmas and she will also feature in The Holly And the Ivy by John L Gardner, adapted by John Rutter.
Colne Valley are also giving another young musician a chance in the spotlight.
Sam Barber, a Year 11 student at Salendine Nook High School, will play the organ to provide pre-concert entertainment at the concert. He’s a talented young musician as he also plays trombone with Kirklees Youth Symphony Orchestra.
The choir is delighted that it will be joined a week on Sunday by its patron, Patricia, Countess Of Harewood.
She took on the role after the death last year of her husband, the Earl of Harewood. He had been the choir’s patron for more than 60 years.
This festival concert will include Christmas music and traditional carols.The men will open the concert with a piece which says it all: Keith Christopher’s Let All Men Sing.
The band’s programme will include Prokofiev’s Troika, better known as the Midnight Sleighride, Verdi’s Force Of Destiny Overture, Peter Graham’s Phoenix (War of the Worlds) plus Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.
Its soloists will include Lucy Murphy (flugel horn), Leah Williams (tenor horn), David Thornton (euphonium) and Ryan Watkins (trombone)
It’s a programme guaranteed to delight the Town Hall audience especially when choir and band sign off with Gordon Langford’s arrangement of A Christmas Fantasy.
On December 22, Colne Valley Male Voice Choir will be singing yet more Christmas music in a concert with Marsden Band and soprano Sarah Ogden at St Bartholomew’s Church in Marsden
