ORGANISERS have declared Whiteparish’s first music festival a huge hit.
 

Events were well supproted and raised more than £2,000 towards the upkeep of the village church
 

Whiteparish Music Festival committee member Richard Tulloc said: “We set out with two aims – to bring good quality music into the village, and to raise money for the running costs of All Saints, the village church.  We succeeded on both counts.
 

He added that for many festival-goers the “high spot” of the event was the concluding concert by the Sarum Six – a group of professional musicians from around the Salisbury area including Philip Lawson a former member of the King Singers.
 

The festival at All Saints Church kicked off with the ‘Come and Sing Session’
 

Sixty singers and around ten instrumentalists took part in the session and studied Vivaldi’s Gloria and Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine under the guidance of Michael Keeley, a former chorister at All Saints Church, who sang with the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral at Lady Thatcher’s funeral service.
 

The second event was an organ recital by 17-year-old Ben Maton, a pupil at Bishop Wordsworth School in Salisbury and an organ scholar at the city’s St Thomas Church.
 

Asked if there would be another musical festival Richard replied: “It’s too soon to say yet, but we will certainly consider it.  Michael Keeley, Ben Maton and members of Sarum Six have all been kind enough to say they very much enjoyed taking part, which is good to know.”