Saint Hilda’s Festival Chorus is a choir with its own orchestra.
The choir, made up of some 50 enthusiastic amateur vocalists, was formed in 1991 and performed its first concert, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, in November of that year under the direction of Stephen Maltby. The concert was accompanied by many local musicians especially for this occasion, and later became known as Saint Hilda’s Festival Orchestra.
The orchestra, known as St Hilda’s Festival Orchestra, was formed to accompany the choir at most of its major concerts.
It was also recognised that a performance of Elijah would not be complete without four highly competent soloists. Consequently, a relationship developed with Professor Mark Wildman of the Royal Academy of Music, London and Mark was only too pleased to provide us with excellent young student soloists from the Academy for this and many subsequent concerts.
Since that first concert in 1991 the choir and orchestra have performed many works together.
St Hilda’s Church has excellent acoustics and a fine Harrison and Harrison organ.