[the cantata] is a joyful piece of accessible music which celebrates Todmorden and it made me deeply aware of how much I love living in the town. I think it ought to be performed say every five years, and be one of those pieces that everyone in Tod has access to at least once on their lives. It's good enough, and appealing enough, to be performed more widely, but alas! not everywhere is Todmorden.

Todmorden has a thriving music scene with a long history. The celebrations opened with the orchestra, and it was only fitting that the last big event should be a music festival featuring some of the other music organisations in Todmorden: The Choral Society, Music for the Many, Todmorden Community Brass Band and Three Valleys Gospel Choir.     

The festival began with a Nasheeds choir, local children mainly but not exclusively from Todmorden’s South Asian community,  performing Islamic music. Attendance was fantastic and the audience very diverse. Many people were there who had never heard Nasheeds before.

 The Todmorden Community Brass Band took the stage next, with a completely different style of performance, and again, the event was well supported.

 Meanwhile, two open workshops took place in a different room, with the Three Valleys Gospel Choir running a singing workshop, where two songs were taught, and then the people attending the workshop encouraged to return later that night to join the choir on stage for those numbers. Those attending really loved the workshop, and almost all of them did in fact perform with the choir later.

The other workshop was run by the brass band, ‘Try an instrument’, and although the people attending wouldn’t have been able to get to a level to join the performance later that afternoon, everyone had fun trying, and hadn’t previously known that the band was open to complete beginners.

 In the afternoon was a particular highlight of the 150th celebrations – the Todmorden Cantata.  The first version of the cantata was composed and performed in 2022 in Centre Vale Park as part of Todmorden’s celebrations for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. In 2025, to celebrate the 150th anniversary, a new version of the work was commissioned, composed and performed by our Music for the Many festival orchestra and choir, made up of children and some adult volunteer musicians.  The event was fully booked, which we are pleased with, because it was an unmissable performance. The cantata tells the story of the town of Todmorden, from the Fieldens, cotton, slavery, de-industrialisation, the floods and the diverse community that it is today. 74 singers and musicians were involved, and it received a standing ovation.

 It would have been very hard to top the Cantata, but the Choral Society performance following on was also outstanding and very accessible. Featuring a premiere of a piece by local composer Adrian Guy, other music was chosen for either its connection with the Town Hall (a piece about a court room drama for example) or because it was written at the time the Town Hall opened.

 The festival concluded with the performance by the Three Valleys Gospel Choir, featuring guests from the workshop earlier in the day.  Always a fantastic sounding choir, singing on the stage in the Town Hall really elevated their performance.