Streets in song as region's musical heritage celebrated

A total of 35 choirs from all over the British Isles, as well as special guests from Germany, took part in a "massed sing" at Sheffield City Hall on Saturday before busking at various locations across the city centre.

The event was organised by Sheffield's gay choir, Out Aloud, and began on Friday night with a City Hall concert featuring singers Nell Farrell and Richard Benn, the Anything Goes Orchestra and the Free Radicals.

Originally created "to promote the development – through song – of a society free from all forms of oppression, exploitation, exclusion and violence, " the National Street Choir Festival, founded in Sheffield in 1984, still has peace and protest at its core.

Meanwhile, bands from across the region were filmed in Sheffield yesterday performing a newly-written piece entitled A Symphony for Yorkshire.

More than 200 musicians from across the county have been involved in the project, masterminded by composer Benjamin Till with the BBC.

Each band, ensemble and soloist recorded their parts separately in Leeds last month, before coming together for the "grand finale" yesterday.

Derek Renshaw, musical director of the Stannington Brass Band, said: "The evening recording session was demanding but the players got through it with remarkable perseverance and good humour.

"Inevitably, with a project of this size and complexity, schedules run over so it was nearly midnight by the time we finished recording the brass parts."

A Symphony for Yorkshire will be broadcast on the BBC on August 1, to mark Yorkshire Day.