It was great to enter a packed Minster Church recently for this concert which consisted of readings and well known carols for choir and audience, enabling us all to celebrate the festive season.

Ben Horden led the popular Festival Chorus in familiar and well known pieces such as I saw three ships, The Sussex carol, and The holly and the ivy, and the audience joined in with the chorus singing popular carols such as O come, all ye faithful, We three kings, and Hark! the herald angels sing.

Readings were given in between the musical items and consisted of an excerpt from Dickens’s classic story, A Christmas Carol, and more light-hearted pieces made famous by Joyce Grenfell (The Nativity Play) and John Julius Norwich (The twelve days of Christmas).

Other musical favourites included Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, arranged by conductor Ben, and the programme concluded with Jonathan Willcock’s Christmas Pudding, a delicious mixture of famous Christmas melodies. Several other enjoyable items were included in the concert to make for a fine celebratory evening.

Martin Baker was the organist for the evening, and readers were Jan Willson, (replacing Richard Willson who was unwell), and the other was Kate Fenn.

Thanks go to all involved, including the nine soloists, for getting us all well into the Christmas Spirit. We look forward to the chorus’s next concert consisting of Brahms’ German Requiem and Elgar’s lovely Sea Pictures, performed on Saturday, April 13, 7pm at Lynn Minster, next year.

– Andy Tyler, Lynn News