Wide-ranging and delightful performance by Opus 44 in Bingley

MADRIGALS to Musicals was a wide-ranging and delightful performance by Bingley’s female choir Opus 44 at the town's Little Theatre Studio on Saturday night.

Fresh from glory at the Mrs Sunderland Music Festival in Huddersfield, the choir, which has many members from Keighley and the Aire Valley, began with Malcolm Arnold's Make a Joyful Noise - something they did throughout the evening.

Happy on home turf, it was also a family affair as they were conducted by their director Alison Pryce-Jones, with husband John Pryce-Jones the accompanist and daughter Catrin, the guest soloist.

Robert Latham's witty, yet challenging, arrangements of folky favourites such as Dashing Away With The Smoothing Iron or Soldier, Soldier, were rollicking fun exquisitely performed.

This choir has great precision married with warmth and rounded depth, beautifully illustrated in an inventive Mexican song and the moving spiritual, I'm Going Up a Yonder.

Miss Pryce-Jones, who begins a master's degree at the Royal Academy of Music, London, in September, showed wonderful tone and technique, from the relative simplicity of Purcell’s Sweeter than Roses to the passion of Juliet's Waltz Song by Gounod.

Opus 44's many trophies and silverware were rightly displayed at the end of a well-polished and utterly charming evening.

Chris Tate