FESTIVAL REPORT

What an amazing twelve days of performance. Over 5000 performances over a total of forty-six sessions utilising three venues in the magnificent Huddersfield Town Hall.

The festival began on the first day of the month with the adult singing workshop. Over 100 singers were led by Thom Meredith and joined by Musica Kirklees Youth Orchestra and fantastic soloists to learn and then perform music from stage and screen.

The festival continued on 11 February with three contrasting workshops. The special needs workshop saw three local special schools work with The Dark Horse Theatre company and then perform their own prepared pieces to everyone. We finished with dancing to the festival’s theme song - Reach for the Stars.

At the same time as the special needs workshop in the concert hall the mini music makers workshops were held in the Old Court room. Toddler and baby sing and sign sessions were fun filled times for very young performers.

A quick change of furniture and ambience and the Concert Hall was transformed into an afternoon Tea Dance for dementia sufferers and their carers. Singing, dancing, music from a junior choir and a violinist and lots of tea and cake made for a wonderful experience for over 80 participants. 

On the 12 February over 800 Key Stage two children filled the concert hall for the Tiny Strings, Big Voices event.  Well prepared songs and ukelele playing was led by Peter Simons, Ginette Eady and Sue Bennett from Musica Kirklees. About half the children returned to provide a concert for parents and guests in the evening too.

Friday 13 February saw the first of the 140 classes which take place over the festival. Junior and youth choirs from Kirklees, Halifax, Sheffield, Saddleworth, Hull and Kendal sang in eight different classes. 

The weekend of the 14 and 15 saw all the vocal classes; over 35 of them from key stage one children to experienced amateur operatic singers singing everything from Walt Disney through musical theatre and pop ballads to German Leider, Stephen Sondheim and opera arias. An amazing two days of performance demonstrating the range of exceptional talent we have in the area and beyond.

On Sunday 15 we held the annual Young Musician of the Year competition with £1800 worth of prizes at stake for those musicians who are just embarking on a musical career. As this is such a popular event, we have split instrumental and vocals this year with only instrumentalists performing this year. Vocalists will get their chance next year. The winner was Toby Johnson Jones who plays the French Horn.

Monday and Tuesday 16 and 17 February it was the turn of the pianists and public speakers/actors to take to the stages in the classes. A change in the conditions of entry this year have seen no age limit to the graded classes and this has resulted in larger number of performers and positive feedback from teachers. From a pre-grade one performance to a Chopin Etude the performances were well prepared and confident. Over 25 spoken word classes witnessed verse speaking, acting, business pitches and storytelling. From a seven year old telling a humorous poem to a retired gentleman performing from Shakespeare the standard was very high and always entertaining.

Monday evening provided a small group of budding professional actors with advice and coaching for auditions in the spoken word masterclass.

The hall was transformed once more on Tuesday evening for the Festival Dance Showcase: an evening of wonderful dancing from local groups. This year tap, street, cheerleading and carnival were just some of the marvellous dances on display.

A new venture of the festival was an Orchestra Tutti session. This is a quote from one of the musicians; ‘On Wednesday 18th February nearly 150 musicians of all ages came together in Huddersfield Town Hall for the first ever Kirklees Orchestral Tutti. Players from seven local organisations, Musica Youth Orchestra Huddersfield, Huddersfield and Slaithwaite Philharmonic Orchestras, Paddock and Holmfirth Orchestras, University of Huddersfield and Musica Kirklees took part, and Peter Simons and Andrew Griffiths from Musica Kirklees led the workshop. The musicians were presented with a difficult programme and they certainly rose to the challenge. The aim of the evening was to raise awareness of the fabulous orchestral heritage we have in Kirklees as well as promoting the work of our community orchestras to our younger players. And by the end of the evening there was no doubt that this aim had been well and truly achieved.’  The festival was delighted with the evening too and it will certainly feature in future festivals. 

On Thursday 19 February eighteen instrumental classes of strings, woodwind, brass, percussion and ensembles took place. This is the largest number individual instrumentalists we have seen at the festival for some years and they delighted audiences with their variety and standard of play. Percussion classes were reintroduced this year and we hope they will become a regular feature of the festival. 

Friday afternoon and complete with glitter ball the concert hall was transformed into the Discofest at Mrs S. U3 - a wonderful local live band and a DJ took the dancers (adults only) back to the 60s, 70s and 80s. This is the second Discofest of the festival and its popularity is growing with over 200 people dancing the afternoon away.

On Friday evening the festival organised another new event. This was a musical theatre audition masterclass for those young people who are hoping to make a career of musical theatre. 

Saturday 21 February was adult choir day and we saw thirty-two separate performances over ten different classes. Community choirs, local choirs, male voice, female voice, mixed voice, small choirs and barbershop groups from all over the country joined us. Five of these choirs were invited to join us for the evening concert.

The Last Night of the Festival Concert took place on the evening of the last day with performances from some of the very best performers from the whole festival. A glorious celebration of Performing Arts.

The 2026 festival has been a great success.  You will find the restuls of all the classes below.  The festival committee congratulate and thank every performer for their preparation and hard work and for their strength and confidence to perform to the audiences.  We would also like to thank our sponsors, friends and supporters without whom the festival could not run. Thank you too to the town hall staff who have been unfailingly helpful during the festival and to the small army of ‘yellow’ helpers who seamlessly make the festival run smoothly.

Photographs taken by the Huddersfield Photo Imaging Club (HPIC) can be found and downloaded from the website or found at this link https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrs-sunderland/albums

Time to put 2027 fetival dates in your diary.  The pattern will be slightly different next year as Kirklees School Half term falls in the first week of the festival.  Adult workshop will be 7 February 2027 and the festival will run from 17 to the 27 February 2027.  

Launch of syllabus and entries will open on 1 September 2026.