Here’s to 2024!

All of us here at HCS want to say a big thankyou to our Subscribers, Friends and Followers for your support and encouragement over the past year. We are already looking forward with excitement to the coming year and the 2024-25 season (which is still under wraps, but watch this space!).

I’d like to say that the choir is back to its previous best, but actually that’s not quite right. Singers of long standing as well as audience members are telling me that in 2023 the choir has been singing better than it ever has – and the evidence is in the quality of performances. Who can forget Beethoven’s monumental Missa Solemnis, a stunning Monteverdi Vespers and a very short notice BBC Prom concert of film, tv and gaming soundtracks which turned out to be a highlight of the Albert Hall season?

So we move into 2024 with much anticipation and with choir numbers on the increase for the first time in years. Much credit goes to our professional team, of course, but without you, our audience, none of this could be achieved. It is a strange twist of history that one West Yorkshire town should host choral and orchestral performances of such outstanding quality, but it can only continue to do so because you, the audience, come to the Town Hall and create the magic that binds performers and listeners together. We need that hall to be full!

So here’s a New Year’s resolution you might try – become a season ticket holder. And if you already are, encourage your friends to do so. Together (as they say) we’ll make sweet music.

John Harman, HCS General Secretary