AWARD-WINNING choir Cor Bach has announced it will be returning to Whitchurch for a follow-up concert, a year after they visited the town.

Last May, the acapella singers who had already taken the internet by storm, made an appearance in St Alkmund's Church and raised nearly £2,500 for local charities.

The group will be holding another concert on Saturday, May 20 at 7.30pm for the Whitchurch Rotary and Inner Wheel club charities.

Last time, instead of a conventional choral recital, the audience heard unaccompanied versions of original chart hits by pop-rockers Queen, Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra and American singer-songwriter Billy Joel with a little Hollywood film music and a few Broadway tunes thrown in.

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The concert ended with the group receiving a standing ovation and it was a fundraising triumph for the town’s Rotary prostate cancer testing and Inner Wheel’s breast cancer initiatives.

Whitchurch Rotary Club president Steve Chisholm said: "You could almost feel rows of eyebrows creeping up foreheads.

"If the audience was expecting an evening of Gregorian chants they couldn’t have been further off the mark."

Cor Bach is an acapella spin-off group from the acclaimed Staffordshire-based ‘Daleian Singers’ who were voted ‘Best UK Choir’ at the 2019 Cornwall International Festival of Male Voices and the group recently had more success.

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A Rotary club spokesperson said: "More recently they took a major title at the Midlands Choir of the Year competition in Lichfield.

"In a double victory night they not only won top marks from the judging panel but from the audience too.

"And a few months later they were supporting renowned tenor Russell Watson who also sang with them at a charity concert in Cheshire.

'Cor Bach Returns’ is supported by saxophonist Oliver Pritchard Jones, a second year jazz and classical saxophone student at Leeds Conservatoire who, by the time he was 15, was playing at the famous Ronnie Scott jazz club in London."

Tickets are £12.50 and are now on sale in Whitchurch at Gallery Flowers in the High Street, and Sole at 15 Green End, or by contacting Peggy Mullock on 07968 583208.