On Saturday evening December 16th we took to the Victoria Hall stage once again for our annual Christmas Concert there and enjoyed another fantastic, super-high quality, memorable night in front of our biggest audience since before Covid lockdowns three years earlier. Not since our Christmas Concert of December 2019 had we seen so many hundreds of people packing the streets outside the hall and around the corner of the building, waiting for the doors to open and come in to watch our concert, and with the night clashing with the BBC1 final of ‘Strictly’ too, it was thrilling for everyone on stage to see the hall look full in every section, from the stalls to the circle balcony and on both sides too where the hall’s month-long, on-going pantomime lighting rigs allowed.

As ever, the main Eagley Band and Community Choir performed the whole first half of the concert between them and after the interval, our Community Band joined for the whole second half. Our MD Chris Wormald conducted and introduced the whole evening as always, inviting, encouraging and enjoying the usual audience interaction and involvement from the start, and all the way through to the massed encore of Jingle Bells at 9.40pm.

Our programme once again contained many arrangements which no other bands or choirs have, with Chris keen to publicly thank all of the organisations and people responsible for granting the necessary permissions to continue making our Eagley concerts unique. The evening featured many traditional items such as Sleigh Ride, Do You Hear What I Hear?, Little Drummer Boy, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, The Christmas Song, Winter Wonderland, It’s The Most Wonderful Time of The Year and I’ll Be Home For Christmas, but this year we also introduced Carol of The Bells, Christmas Lullaby, Cliff Richard’s Little Town, the big band swing favourite of Terry Wogan, What A Day (It’s Christmas In That Old Fashioned Way), the Carpenters’ Merry Christmas Darling and a brand new carol composed by 92-year-old choir member Tom Rowley with Chris Wormald, Babe of Bethlehem, which preceded the spectacular Polar Express end to the first half.

For a great many people, the highlight of the first half (and evening) was the outstanding singing of 10-year-old Olivia Holt (daughter of our Principal Cornet Lynsey Hayes) who enchanted the huge audience and everyone on stage with her rendition of Where Are You Christmas? Olivia displayed no nerves at all and in fact, total poise, control, confidence and personality way beyond her years before a very quick interval change of clothes into band black to play percussion with the Community Band throughout the second half.

As every December, the first half of our Victoria Hall Christmas Concert features the short trophy presentations made by Band President Gerry Russell and all voted for by band players, except for the MD’s Award. This year’s winners were Harvey Crombleholme (Players’ Player of The Year), Dec Cullen (Band Person of The Year), Becca Crompton (Most Improved Player) and, jointly, Les Fellowes and Will Jordan (MD’s Award).

The evening concluded with grateful acknowledgements, thanks and floral presentations to Lesley Turner-Patel for all her transport throughout another year, to Jane Dunlevy for her superb raffle hamper prizes she makes for every concert and her tireless work behind the scenes, to the amazingly supportive Stranks family for all of their ever-present help, loading and unloading percussion and equipment at every concert and setting the stage, and to Dec Cullen for his outstanding contribution to the arranging. It was great to welcome back so many former Eagley players in the audience at the concert once again too, ranging from locals Lee Tramontana and Geoff Gliddon to Steven Woolhouse (who had driven up especially from his home in Birmingham), Dawn Lindley to Phoebe Matthews (who had flown back from Australia for Christmas) and numerous familiar faces of the recent and not so recent past who have made the Eagley Christmas Concert the night of the year to come back together and see the current band perform.