The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity for &P HQ – three weekends filled with fantastic music making by amazing musicians – and it’s been great to get back to some live music making with fantastic audiences.
We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came along to support, listen, and enjoy. From Musical Theatre favourites from shows like Wicked, Oliver! & Chicago, to evocative Spanish chivalric songs by Jacques Ibert & romantic gems by Richard Strauss, to the dark searching of Shostakovitch’s Cello sonata, to the fun and fireworks of Beethoven’s Clarinet Trio – and in between that – a journey into outer space with music by Anton Webern, Thea Musgrave & Franz Schubert, and eight fantastic performances by a group of very talented promising young musicians.
Next year will be the 5th anniversary since &Piano was established, as well as part of the Kirklees 2023 Year of Music, so next year is going to be a real good’un…! Check out some of the shots taken at the festival in our latest gallery, and make sure you keep up to date by signing up to our mailing list here

Over two years since our last festival, we’re delighted to announce that the &Piano Music Festival is back, returning with a wonderful mix of music featuring fantastic performers over three weekends.
In addition to our three main events – Musical Theatre on Sunday 1st May at 3pm, Song on Friday 6th May at 7:30pm and Instrumental on Saturday 14th May at 7:30pm – we have a day full of events for people of all ages to enjoy and experience live music on Saturday 7th May, starting with our Family&Piano event at 11am, where we’ll be taking our audience on a journey into outer space, with soprano Charlotte Trepass, and cellist Stephen Laidlaw, and then we’ll be presenting a completely free relaxed performance in the afternoon for anyone to enjoy and drop in at 2pm, later followed by our first live Young Musician Showcase in the evening at 7:30pm, featuring talented young musicians from Greenhead College, Huddersfield New College and Huddersfield University.
Visit our ‘What’s On’ page to learn more about all these events and book your tickets today!
Earlier this year &Piano was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to record in the wonderful Huddersfield Town Hall – a venue usually bustling with activity from concerts to wedding receptions.
To help us get ready for action, starting to prepare to come back to live performances, as well as to help whet your musical appetite in anticipation of our next festival in May 2022, we invited two performers to offer a short selection of varied pieces and songs, to give you a flavour of what to expect from them when they perform live next year.
Our first Town Hall Session, featuring Musical Theatre performer Marie Collins will be released this coming Wednesday, 28th July at 7pm on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. Featuring songs from Andrew Lloyd-Weber, Stephen Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown and Rodgers & Hammerstein, it’s a fantastically varied programme that shows how musical theatre has evolved over the decades!
To make sure you don’t miss it, check out and follow our Facebook page here.
Or visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel here.
The video will be live at 7pm on Wednesday July 28th 2021.
After receiving plenty of excellent applications, our Young Musician Showcase for 2021 is here! Check out the video below to hear nine wonderful performances from talented young musicians from across Kirklees and Calderdale.
If you are, or know of a talented, passionate young musician who would like to apply for next year’s Young Musician Showcase (hopefully done as a live performance…!) then keep an eye out early next year for more information.
Filmed in our home of Slaithwaite Civic Hall, for some of these musicians – following a very tumultuous and challenging past year – this was the first opportunity they had had in over 12 months to perform with a live pianist. From cello to voice, it’s another really varied and fantastic selection of pieces for you to explore. Give it a listen!

Are you a musician aged 15-21 who lives or studies in Kirklees or Calderdale? &Piano wants to hear from you!
Last year, in the middle of the first lockdown, &Piano held its first Young Musician Showcase, which gave 10 talented performers from around our region the opportunity to perform to a live virtual audience. On the night itself, we had about 180 people watching together, and since then, the event has been viewed over a 1000 times both on Facebook and Youtube.
After the success of last year’s event, applications are now open to perform as part of our 2021 Young Musician Showcase. Please consider applying if you are:
- between 15-21 years old.
- grade 7 or above standard on any instrument (including piano but excluding organ) or as a singer (classical & musical theatre)
- living or studying in Kirklees or Calderdale (or you have a non-term-time address in Kirklees or Calderdale – for example when not at university)
- You don’t need to be studying music as an academic subject at school/college/university.
Regulations allowing, we are inviting up to 10 performers to record a piece up to approximately 5 minutes long with a live accompanist at The Civic Hall in Slaithwaite (late March/early April – date to be confirmed), which will then be shared as part of our online event, broadcast on Sunday April 25th, 7pm.
You will have the opportunity to have 20-30 minutes to work with a professional accompanist on your piece, and then we’ll record a performance.
To apply please send:
- Your name, locality (area you are from or where you study), your age, the instrument you play, and who you study with (your instrument teacher)
- The proposed piece (or you may offer a choice) you would like to perform.
- A video (with or without accompaniment) of you performing a short piece (this can be the piece you would intend to perform, or a different piece) on your instrument.
Here are a few tips on making a good video:
- Make sure we can clearly see you and your instrument in the video
- The video or sound does not need to be professional or fancy. Filming on a smartphone or tablet is absolutely fine. You do not need to dress up/dress formal, but looking reasonably smart makes a good impression!
- Briefly introduce yourself and the piece you are going to play – the name and the composer
- Make sure it’s a piece that equally shows off your ability but that you are also comfortable playing.
The deadline for applications is March 19th. We will acknowledge receipt of every entry, and successful applications will be informed by email.
If you are under-18 you will need permission to apply from a parent or guardian.
When selecting our performers we’ll be considering ability as well as looking to create a balanced programme of different instruments, singers and repertoire – it won’t feature 10 of the same instrument!
There is no fee to apply, and if you are not successful this time, then you’ll be welcome to apply again to another potential YMS event providing you still fit all the criteria.
Send your video* and requested information, or any questions you might have to: youngmusician@andpiano.co.uk.
*If your video is too large to send by email, then you can send the video via www.wetransfer.com to the same email address.
&Piano takes the safety and protection of participants very seriously. Please find our Safeguarding Policy here. Any in-person recording that takes place will be done strictly adhering to COVID-19 Health & Safety guidelines.
We know that 2020 has been a particularly challenging year for many people, including ourselves. We’ve had to adapt quickly, change our plans, learn new skills – and so many things, including our events, have been cancelled.
So we’re delighted to be able to share with you two recordings we’ve produced, recorded in the beautiful Huddersfield Town Hall, to help spread a bit of hope and cheer during a very different and unusual Christmas period.
Soprano Ann Wilkes, who grew up in Huddersfield and is now based in Manchester having studied at the RNCM, performs ‘I Know That My Redeemer Liveth’ from Handel’s Messiah – a Yorkshire musical staple, most famously performed every year (normally) by the Huddersfield Choral – and ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’, a poignant song made famous by Judy Garland, who performed it in the MGM film musical ‘Meet Me In St. Louis’
Thank you to all our supporters and followers who have encouraged us, watched our events, and helped us throughout the year. Thank you to all our new 88 Keys members, and we hope that we will be able to bring you more music in the new year.
Join us for our second livestream – our vocal event featuring Bass-Baritone Neil Balfour for a short programme of songs that document his experience of the national lockdown in 2020. Owing to technical issues that we unfortunately experienced last Friday in our first livestream, this event is pre-recorded earlier in the day – so there will be no issues with this broadcast…! Please join us and find out for yourself on Saturday 26th September at 7:30pm. This event will be online to watch later as well.
Today, we’re delighted to be able to share with you a little bit of good news…we may not be going ahead with our usual September festival, but we are, however, really excited to be able to announce that we’ll be offering TWO live-streamed performances at 7:30pm, one on Friday 18th September & another on Saturday 26th September, marking what would have been our instrumental and vocal evenings.

We’ll be broadcasting LIVE from our usual venue of The Civic in Slaithwaite, and have invited the performers who were due to be performing back in May at our first ‘Chilled Classical’ gig at the Magic Rock Brewing Tap House.
Both nights will feature a 30-minute programme of music put together by the performers, reflecting on the events of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown, the complete silencing of live-music performance, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement that also swept the world. These will be completely free of charge to watch, on either our Facebook or Youtube channels, but we’ll be encouraging a ‘pay as you feel’ donation in lieu of a ticket.

To celebrate, at last, a coming-together of musicians, we thought the more the merrier, and so Tom Greed (Violin) along with Polly Virr (Cello) will be helping &Piano mark it’s first ever trio performance on Friday 18th September 7:30pm. Along with Artistic Director Christopher Pulleyn, they’ve created a 4-movement sonata from different composers’ pieces to describe the moods and feelings of the events that have affected the world this year, from dreamy film music by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto to the playful, fiery joy of Beethoven.

The following week on Saturday 26th September 7:30pm, Leeds based Bass-Baritone Neil Balfour will be sharing his musical moods and inspirations during the lockdown, using songs and Opera arias to reveal how the lockdown affected him personally and professionally.
After the success of our innovative online Young Musician Showcase, we’re boldly traversing new territory again and doing our best to present music during difficult and challenging circumstances, and it needs to be said that these live-streams wouldn’t be possible without the generous donations from our supporters and 88 Keys members.
We’re really excited about these performances – we hope that these events will demonstrate the energy and thought that everyone behind the scenes is investing in order to make them as engaging and powerful as if our audience were there in person.
So be sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel, like our Facebook page, and join us on the 18th and 26th September at 7:30pm for what could possibly be the first (or at least one of the first!) live-music concert performances in Huddersfield since March. We’ll see you then!
As we approach September and what would have been our 3rd festival, we wanted to look back briefly and share with you some of the reactions we had to our Young Musician Showcase, which despite being put together at short notice after the cancellation of our fundraising gala, received some fantastic feedback from all those who tuned in to watch.
As of writing this, we’ve had just around 2,600 views between our Facebook and Youtube pages – a staggering amount, and we were so proud to have been able to find a way of bringing music to people at a time when nobody could gather to make or hear music.
Hear are a few comments we received afterwards:
“Wow, what a great experience and very moving, I’m in awe of the amazing technology I’ve discovered during this unusual time, well done”
“Thank you for a lovely evening. Not the same as a live concert but a treat just the same! Well done”
“I REALLY enjoyed the live stream tonight – fabulous young musicians
without exception. Thank you SO much and I look forward to more!”
“Great to see something we would have wanted to go to during this time of not much happening.”
“Brilliant everyone! What a superb achievement. Great to hear some familiar musicians a few steps further into their development.”
“Terrific! The performers, choice of music and informal relaxed style all a great success”
If you felt particularly inspired by our efforts during lockdown, you might want to nominate us for a Royal Philharmonic Society Inspiration Award, which aims to celebrate organisations and individuals across the UK that worked to keep music going and inspire the nation during the lockdown. We’d love it if you would – you can visit the nomination page here!
In the meantime, keep connected with us through Facebook, Twitter or sign up to our mailing list!

During our online concert on Saturday, &Piano was thrilled to announce the launch of our new friends scheme – ’88 Keys’.
It’s a way for followers of the festival to support us even more, by sponsoring a key on our special ‘&Piano’ Piano! A traditional piano has 88 keys, and so we’re offering them all to be sponsored for an annual donation from just £10.
We want to be a music festival for everyone, so we do not want to ask for large donations. However, a small contribution can go a really long way to helping us offer a wider range of accessible & innovative events, in our aims to encourage more people to enjoy & experience amazing live music.
A number of our keys have already been taken since Saturday, and you can join by signing up below – you can request a specific key, but be quick – it might already have been taken!