We’re 102 years old!

We are getting well settled into our second century.  There are now three separate events in or year’s calendar – one appears for the second time and another is a new kid on the block – but we hope that they will become regular friends.

We have, of course, the main Festival.  This year it runs from Saturday 9th March to Friday 15th March – and, yes; these are rather odd-looking dates!  Read on…
Our adjudicator will be Donal McCrisken, all the way from Northern Ireland – and we’re delighted to welcome back Tim Kennedy, our main accompanist from last year who will be joined on Saturday by Catherine Hall-Smith who will accompany the Open classes on that day.

As well as the main Festival, we are repeating the hugely successful SongShop in November.   This is a day for junior schools to come together and to join into a single choir, under the inspired leadership of Steven Roberts.  This will take place on Friday 10th November.  Participating schools have this in their diaries.

And new this year is a “PianoShop”  Called A Piano Afternoon on the posters, this is a Saturday afternoon at Trinity Methodist Church (9th September) and it is a free afternoon for all teachers and their students, along with parents and children.
During the afternoon, you will see masterclasses with some of last year’s performers.  You will be introduced to the new 2024 syllabus ans will also hear a recital by one of our recent stars, Josh Luxon-Robinson who is now studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.  With tea and cake thrown in, what’s not to like?

But what about those dates?

We book our venue just as soon as we can – generally at least a year in advance, but when we came to confirm the dates, we found that our traditional closing Saturday was no longer available.  We have therefore had to shunt our week forward.  The Adult Vocal classes, traditionally on that last Saturday, will move a week forward to March 9th.

The other days will take place from Monday 11th – 15th but we can’t just move everything en bloc.  This means that the timetable will need to be rewritten, almost from scratch.
It may mean that while some days will remain almost unchanged other classes will move to new territories.  If you are a “regular” and you know that moving days would cause you real problems, then do get in touch with the Secretary

Booking

You are strongly encouraged to book online – and you can pay online too.   When you come to Christ Church in March, we’ll also have a card reader available for all of our Front of House transactions.

We have moved to a new online booking scheme which shows signs this it will be far easier and more intuitive to use.  You can’t actually make any entries till the beginning of September but you can make a start!  Visit our Bookings page at playandperform.co.uk/skipton where you can register yourself and have a look around.