Update: 1000 sing in the square
YouTube video from Laura Green
National Street Choirs Festival 2014 Comes to Hebden Bridge again
Monday, 7 July 2014
This coming weekend, the National Street Choirs Festival 2014 Comes to Hebden Bridge again. Calder Valley Voices last hosted the festival in 2002. After the excitement of the Tour de France racing through town, Hebden Bridge will again be buzzing as hundreds of singers from across the UK will fill the town with song.
HebWeb photos from National Street Choirs Festival 2002
The festival begins on Friday, 11th July, with two concerts: Seize the Day and Red Hippo at the Picturehouse and O'Hooley & Tidow with Deep C Divas at Hope Baptist Chapel. Doors open at 7.15 for an 8pm start in both venues. Some tickets (£5 apiece) are still available to the public from the website.
The next day, Saturday 12th July, there will be free music all over town. At midday in Lees Yard, about 1,000 singers will gather for a mass sing. From 2 until 5pm, you can listen to 40 different community choirs singing in 14 busking spots across the town. You will hear songs from a variety of genres, funny and serious, historic and modern, both local in origin and from around the world and all sung by people with a love of singing.
On Sunday morning, as part of a number of workshops for the choirs, you may hear the sound of drumming on Hebden Royd School's playing field. Please go along to listen and maybe take part.
This will be the 32nd birthday of the festival, which began in Sheffield in 1982. The festival's overarching aim is to promote a world free of exploitation, oppression, violence and exclusion.
Calder Valley Voices
If the festival inspires you to sing then contact Calder Valley Voices for details of a community choir near you