Hereford Cantabile had a ball at Llangollen with two days of singing and socialising, and a trophy to bring home having won the Childrens Folk Choir competition. They were also the highest placed British choir in the Senior Children’s Choir coming fourth to choirs from Canada, the Czech Republic and the USA.

Mrs Williamson said:

“Well done girls and Laurence and thank you. So proud of you all and many congratulations to our wonderful Canadian friends.”

Their new friends from the St Collen’s Concert – Canadian Shallowly Newfoundland & Labrador Youth – had the winning score for the Senior Childrens Choir class which was the highest score overall and gave them the Choir of the World title too.

Cantabile’s festival started with the fabulous St Collen’s concert where we were treated to two world class performances from the two very different choirs –  both were simply awesome! We also got to see the hoodies for the girls from the HCS PTA for the first time which looked fab.

The opening ceremony and royal visit followed, both full of colour and enthusiastic cheering. Then in the evening the ‘Heart of Llangollen’ Concert had Charlotte and Emily, who are sadly leaving this year, carrying the Union Jack in the Ceremony of Nations. Terry Waite’s following address emphasised the importance of music in creating harmony with ourselves and with our neighbours. Cantabile’s two songs ‘The Butterfly’ and ‘Hava Nagela’ echoed those sentiments beautifully.

Early on Wednesday morning they were the second of fourteen choirs to compete in the Senior Children’s Choir just after 9:00 am. They impressed the judges with ‘The Skylark’ and ‘Johnny Says No!’ commenting they were “technically wonderful … fantastic dynamics and pianissimo …wonderful tuning and flexible singing …”.

In their second competition class their singing of ‘Waly Waly’ and ‘Dance to your Daddy’ quite literally wowed the judges “Beautiful blended choral sound … Wow – great solos in Dance to your Daddy … “.

Naturally Laurence was superb in both classes but seemed very taken with his role as Johnny!

You can watch highlights from Tuesday and Wednesday on S4C Welsh TV (click ‘S’ on bar for English subtitles):

You can also watch all the choirs’ singing on Llangollen TV.  See if you agree with the difficult decisions the panel of judges had to make!

The scores are all published on the official Llangollen Eisteddfod website:

A9 – Senior Childrens Choir competition – Judges Suzi Digby, Paul Mealor and Aida Swenson

A10 – Senior Childrens Choir competition  – Judges Paul Mealor, Gwenan Gibbard and Aida Swenson