Special guest for male voice choir

Tickets are selling fast for the annual concert of Portadown Male Voice Choir where the special guest singer is Laura Wright. She appeared on TV just last Saturday for the pre-match singing in the England versus Wales rugby match '“ she sang for England while fellow mezzo soprano Katherine Jenkins did likewise for Wales.

Laura (25) is expected to pack the Civic Centre concert hall on Friday, April 15, with an eclectic mix of songs embracing popular culture, operatic, musical theatre and folk. It is part of the choir’s 90th celebrations, having been sounded in 1926.

She first came to public notice in 2005 when she won the BBC2 Chorister of the Year for Female Voice. The life of the rugby-playing, cycling and running Suffolk-born songstress has been one of non-stop success since then. In 2014, she stopped halfway through the London Marathon to give spectators an impromptu performance!

With combined album sales in excess of a million, Laura is one of the biggest-selling classical artists of the past decade. She has backed this up in the ‘live’ sense, as special guest artist in Alfie Boe’s English tour, the Queen’s Jubilee tour with Russell Watson and opened the iTunes festival for Andrea Bocelli.

She has also performed at American football’s National Football League (NFL) matches; at the Carnegie Cup Final; the FA Cup Final; the Carling Cup Final and the launch of Prince Harry’s Invictus Games with her own composition ‘Invincible’.

Said male choir musical director Gordon Speers, “We are delighted to have signed up a wonderful artist like Laura, a first class graduate of the Royal College of Music, for such an important date in the choir’s history. It’s a real coup for the choir and for the town.”

Tickets for the concert are just £15, and are on sale from Winnie’s Newsagents in Woodhouse Street, McQuillan’s Gents’ Outfitters in William Street or from any choir member.