Armistice memorial concert – Tyrannochorus, 9 November

Cottenham’s Tyrannochorus will be marking the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice with a big concert at Cambridge’s West Road Concert Hall on Friday 9th November at 7pm. Some of the items have been in the pipeline since November 2016, when the choirs performed a remembrance concert at All Saints’ Church, Cottenham. The poster for the event (pictured) features a stylised verson of the Camridge War Memorial on Hills Road called ‘The Homecoming’ by R.Tait McKenzie  from 1922. (The figure was said to have been modelled on one Kenneth Hamilton, an undergraduate whom McKenzie spotted while staying with the Master of Christ’s College.)

The three Cottenham choirs will be joined by the Cambridgeshire Caledonian Pipe Band as well as Harston and Newton School Choir, Haslingfield Endowed Primary School Choir and the Saffron Building Society Community Choir. Also singing is soloist and instrumentalist Patrick Coughlan, who is a Warrant Officer class 2, currently serving as the Regimental Administrative Warrant Officer with the Cambridge University Officer Training Corps, having previously served in tours of Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. To complete the massed array of musicians, an all-female French horn ensemble, Cor 8, will also take to the stage. The entire line-up will be directed by choir director Siobhan Lihoreau, with a programme of music befitting the occasion: some old favourites, some modern favourites and one World Premiere, The Song to the Unknown Warrior.

Pride of place on stage amidst the 150 or more performers will be two ‘TOMMYs’, part of the There But Not There project, and all profits will be donated to their “Remembered Network” of charities which includes Help for Heroes, Walking with the Wounded and the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation. Tickets are just £7 from www.ticketsource.co.uk/tyrannochorus