The Ridgeway Chorale

The Ridgeway Chorale draws its members from Tring, Hertfordshire, and the surrounding area. Besides giving concerts, the choir has sung at weddings and other services, at village entertainments, and annually from the top of Puttenham Church Tower at dawn on 1 May. We do like to sing in churches with excellent acoustics! Thus, we enjoy travelling and do so each year. We have given concerts during the last thirteen years in such far-flung parts of the U.K. as Suffolk, Derbyshire, Powys and Dorset. Abroad we have sung in Switzerland and Burgundy.

Members of the choir give their service absolutely free, so that as much as possible of the money from ticket sales can go to charity. Since its formation in late 2001 the choir has raised almost £24,000 for various charities. At this concert, we are delighted to be singing in aid of the Multiple Sclerosis Centre, Wendover, but we shall also be supporting The Vyne Centre itself.

The choir’s repertoire is very mixed, mostly short pieces, ‘something for everyone’, as we like to say. Composers of sacred items in our Vyne concert range from Anon (fl.c.1577!) to Eric Esenvalds (b.1977), while our secular pieces range from a mediaeval round, through folk song arrangements, to Cole Porter, Billy Joel and ‘Bare Necessities’. We insist that the audience joins in with at least two of the pieces!

We are delighted that dancers from The Vyne Centre, including Tomomi Sato, formerly a principal with the Scottish Ballet, will ‘accompany/illustrate’ several of our songs, a new and exciting experience for all of us!

We are honoured that Declan Zapala, a celebrated, globe-trotting young guitarist who plays in a huge range of styles, will be our guest soloist for the concert. What he will play for us will remain a delightful mystery until the day itself!