The 20th anniversary of the North Wales Choral Festival took place at Venue Cymru, Llandudno on Saturday 3rd November. 11 choirs travelled from all over the UK and Ireland to compete in 3 classes: Youth, Equal Voice and Mixed.

The Festival has recently been taken over by the Marketing and Communications Section of Conwy County Borough Council and so this was a new experience for everyone concerned. The morning began with the Youth section. There were 3 choirs competing in this section: Lucan Community College Choir; Côr Hyn Glanaethwy and Côr Iau Glanaethwy.

After much deliberation the adjudicators named the youngest of the choirs, Côr Iau Glanaethwy, as the class winners, beating their senior choir into 2nd place in the process. The Equal Voice class had been put in place after two male voice choirs had to pull out at the last minute. However, this did nothing to dampen the competition and Shifnal MVC were awarded 1st place in the class, beating the likes of the Mountain Harmony Barbershop Chorus, Cantorion Pontyclun Ladies Choir and The Glenalua Singers in the process.

The final section of the day was the Mixed class. This involved Y Gleision (The Blues) and Y Dreigiau
(The Dragons). They were both in attendance as part of S4C’s programme ‘Codi Canu’. The choirs have only been together for approximately 1 year and are pulled together from the supporters of Wales’ regional rugby teams. Y Dreigiau won the first series of the programme and got to sing the National Anthem before the Wales v England Six Nations game earlier in the year.

This turned out to be the closest class of the day, with the adjudicators even checking if they could award joint second place. After 15 minutes of deliberation Y Gleision were named as class winners, narrowly beating Y Dreigiau into second place, with Oriel Singers and St Patrick’s Church Choir the other choirs in the class. The evening saw the arena at Venue Cymru packed out as the audience eagerly awaited the performances from each of the class winners, as well as an opening performance from Y Dreigiau.

After the opening performance and awards ceremony (where each of the winning choirs’ Musical Directors were presented with their trophy and cheque by Chairman of the Council, Councillor Bill Roberts), the final competition of the Festival took place. Each of the winning choirs was given 15 minutes to perform a variety of songs of their choice and all were warmly received by the audience. All of the choirs were of the highest quality with the adjudicators commenting on the sincerity of their performances and the obvious effort that had been put in beforehand. Again, the decision was a long time coming and Compere, Dilwyn Morgan, was on fine form keeping the audience enthused with his repertoire of gags, which had the audience in stitches during the delay in proceedings – showing just how close the decision was.

However, a decision was made and Côr Iau Glanaethwy was announced as the overall competition winners, to the delight of the audience who stood as one to applaud them. The night ended on a high with a fi nal performance from the winning choir, whose enthusiasm had brought so much to the Festival.

Thanks must be given to all the staff at Venue Cymru, especially the stewards, who were brilliant all day long. Next year’s event is taking place on Saturday 8th November and the organisers are looking to develop the event into a major international festival. A festival website is currently under construction and should be up and running by February 2008. Entry forms for the 2008 Festival will
be sent out shortly so come along and enjoy this wonderful Festival and see the beauty that North Wales has to offer.