Huddersfield Choral Youth Choirs Annual Report 21-22
Huddersfield Choral Youth Choirs Report 2021-2022 for the HCS Annual Report
Our first rehearsal back after lockdown was on 22nd September, with a Come & Sing evening – as we no idea whether we would even have a choir to come back to! By the end of the evening, we were feeling quite optimistic, but even then, we couldn’t have imagined we would have had the successful year we have had.
Our first term was a period of rebuilding and we weren’t in a position to put on our usual Christmas concert, and so performed at a couple of small Christmas carol singing events, while concentrating our efforts on our first official engagement of the season at the Mrs Sunderland Festival in February. The hard work paid off as joint choirs won the Waverley School Trophy in the School Year 11 and under class, and in the Young People’s Choir – 21 years and under, Vocalise gained a first place and an ‘Outstanding’ grade and the joint choirs took second place. Comments from the adjudicator included ‘all the musical complexities achieved with ease’, ‘you don’t compromise on quality’, ‘you sing with a real focus’ and ‘you allow us to reflect and this is the power of music’.
The following month we put on our first concert performance since Christmas 2019, alongside the Lindley Choir in Lindley Methodist Church.
We’d had a long standing ‘promise’ to repeat a lovely evening we’d had in 2019 with our old friends, Hade Edge Band, at the Brass & Voices concert in Holmfirth Civic Hall, guests once again of Thongsbridge Bowling Club who hope to make it an annual affair.
Our final event of the season was our summer concert in June at Holy Trinity, Huddersfield and whilst depleted in numbers (exams, COVID plus other commitments), the choirs once again excelled with a wonderful, varied programme.
We have been incredibly fortunate to have had sponsorship for our concerts this year; the programme for our Spring concert was sponsored by PrintPod & our summer concert was sponsored by Huddersfield Rotary Club. This, together with a grant from One Community, has meant that financially the season has also been quite successful.
Recruitment is still an issue and is top of the agenda for the forthcoming season. We currently have 50 members on the books whereas pre-COVID we had approximately 80. We are already working on ways to increase membership including an incentive scheme for bringing a friend.
We have already lined up a few engagements for the 2022/23 season and are particularly looking forward to joining our parent choir once again at Christmas.