A NEW performance by one of Chester’s top choirs will celebrate the music of the 1950s.

Chester Bach Singers will perform Sounds of the Fifties on at 3pm on Saturday, June 8 at the Wesley Church Centre, St John Street, Chester.

The last in Chester Bach Singers series of concerts tracing the history of choral music through the 20th Century, the special afternoon of music will feature a trio of songs from Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's classic 1950s musical West Side Story including: ‘There’s A Place For Us’, ‘I Like To Be In America’ and ‘I Feel Pretty’.

The concert will also include music written to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation in 1953, Vaughan Williams' ‘Silence and Music’ from ‘A Garland for The Queen’ and John Ireland's love letter to the English landscape ‘The Hills’.

Music from across the pond will also be celebrated with a performance of Aaron Copland's ‘Old American Songs’ whilst the choir will also take the audience on a whistlestop visit to Ireland with Michael Tippett's lively arrangement of ‘Lillibulero’.

The concert will also feature work by composers born in the fifties that are still composing and making music today, including Dame Judith Weir and Chester Bach Singers Musical Director, Martin Bussey.

Pieces set to be performed include Dame Judith Weir's ‘The Song Sung True’ which concludes with an upbeat setting of Edward Lear's ‘The Old Man of the Isles’ and Martin Bussey' set of three songs, ‘Roses’, composed for Chester Bach Singers in 2009 which sets to music poems about roses by ‘old’ Elizabethans - Edmund Waller, Shakespeare and possibly the most famous composer of all – ‘Anon’.

Speaking about the concert, Helen Crich, the Chair of Chester Bach Singers said: “We are delighted to be presenting this celebration of the music of the 1950s with hopefully includes something for everyone, from the music of a classic Hollywood film to the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth and music by the Master of the King's Music and our very own Musical Director Martin Bussey. We are very much looking forward to welcoming everyone to The Wesley Centre in Chester for what promises to be a very special afternoon of music.”