£500 PRIZE OFFERED IN NEW BRIGG FOLK SONG COMPETITION

A Nostalgia Evening with a difference is to be staged in Brigg by the North Lincolnshire Music & Drama Festival as part of celebrations accompanying the 100th festival to be held in the town.
The bygone event will take place on Tuesday, March 31, 2020 in St John's Church when anyone who previously took part in the festival - "however long ago" - can recite a poem or sing a song they originally performed years ago.
A commemorative certificate will be presented to everyone who takes part, but there won't be an adjudicator judging performances on this occasion!
Many of us can remember as children nervously leaving our seats in the cavernous Corn Exchange, making our way up the step wooden steps to the stage, inching our way to the centre and awaiting the adjudicator's signal to begin our piece before the audience seated far below.
We can recall, as a pupil of Glebe Road School in the early 1960s, performing a piece about a Donkey and another called Star Man, gaining a third place certificate for the former and having our picture appear in that week's Lincolnshire Times.
However, many of the honours back then were taken by pupils from Brigg Preparatory, on Bigby Street.
The celebrations surrounding the 100th festival will include an exhibition of memorablia in Brigg Heritage Centre from February to April.
The 2020 festival will take place from March 23 to 26 (music) and from March 30 to April 2 (drama), with the popular concert finale on April 4.
Entry details and further information can be found at www.northlincolnshirebriggfestival.co.uk
In addition, a competition is being held to write a new folk song about the Brigg festival, the town and its people, with a £500 prize.
Although the first festival was held in 1900, there have been gap years for various reasons (including wars) which explains why the 100th is being staged in 2020.
The famous Brigg Fair folk song is a traditional one passed down the generations.
Composer/arranger and musician Percy Grainger came to Brigg early in the 20th century and collected folk songs in the fields and byways, including a rendition of Brigg Fair from Joseph Taylor (Saxby All Saints) with its opening reference to the 5th of August (the date of the annual event).
The haunting melody was subsequently immortalised by Frederic Delius through his haunting rhapsody which is still performed by classical orchestras to this day (search Brigg Fair on YouTube if you want to hear one).
Percy, Frederic and the North Lincolnshire Music and Drama Festival are all inter-connected and have done much to put Brigg on the national and international cultural map.
PICTURED: Some of the music festival competitors at Brigg Corn Exchange in 1965.