Ripon Community Poppy Project – Remembrance

A Concert of Remembrance in Ripon Cathedral

6th November 2025

Doors open 7pm, Concert starts 7.30pm.

Supported by Your Harrogate

Our 2025 Performers

Brackenfield School Junior Choir is an enthusiastic, non-selective choir of children aged 7 to 11 years. The group meets for a half hour session, once a week, to rehearse a varied repertoire of songs especially arranged by musical director, Helen Leaf.

In 2014, Brackenfield Choristers were champions at the Harrogate Competitive Festival. Their award-winning programme included a medley of World War I songs which commemorated the centenary of the Great War. As a result, the choir featured on ITV Calendar News and Radio York. The choir performed the medley the following year at the Music for Youth National Festival finals in Birmingham’s wonderful Symphony Hall, winning the prestigious prize for Innovation. 

Brackenfield Junior Choir performs in school productions, at the annual carol service and regularly entertains at Nursing Homes and in and around the area. It has helped to raise thousands of pounds for charities, appearing with G4’s Jonathan Ansell, renowned trumpeter Mike Lovatt, comedy entertainers Canon and Ball and international flautist, Simeon Wood.

In 2017, the choir was invited to open the Tour de Yorkshire, Eve of Tour celebrations at the National Railway Museum in York. The children performed “Medley for Yorkshire” for over 200 guests including The French Ambassador to the UK, and the General Director of the Tour de France.

Brackenfield Choristers were Harrogate Festival champions again in in 2023 and the following year, they reached the National School Song Competition finals in North London singing “The Promise,” which was written by their Musical Director, Helen Leaf. In 2025, the choir has performed at many local community events including performances in Harrogate Town Centre and at Valley Gardens for Kindness Week which took place in October.

Brackenfield Junior Choir is privileged to be performing at tonight’s Ripon Poppy Project Remembrance Concert and in the coming months we are looking forward to joining Harrogate Male Voice Choir for a charity concert and with our very own Brackenfield Community Choir at the school carol service.

Dishforth Military Wives Choir

The Military Wives Choirs is a community of nearly 2000 women in 72 choirs across the UK and internationally; that celebrates a love of singing and the power of shared experiences!

Our members lives are currently impacted by their military connection, which gives our voice a unique perspective.

Dishforth Military Wives Choir was formed in February 2012 with the aim of providing a distraction for ladies connected to 9 Army Air Corps, offering friendship, support and understanding while the regiment deployed to Afghanistan.

Since then, our membership has changed on a regular basis; as the very nature of the military means that ladies regularly move into, or out of the area.

Knowing that wherever the military send us, there will be a choir with a ready made group of likeminded ladies, singing familiar songs, is a great comfort in what can be a very unsettling time.

Recording four albums, singing with well known artists or performing for The Royal Family are all once in a lifetime experiences we wouldn’t get without our network of choirs; but singing for our local community is a definite favourite of Dishforth Military Wives Choir.

Many of our members are connected to the Royal Engineers and have stood proudly on the streets of Ripon to celebrate their safe return and as they march through to receive the Freedom of the City. We are honoured to be involved in this important concert.

We are conducted by the ever patient Ruth Sladden; for this event however, we are very pleased to welcome our guest Musical Director, Daniel Sladden.

Dan is the MD of the Military Wives Choir based at RAF Leeming and together with our accompanist, Alasdair Jamieson, will lead us through this special event that means so much to those with a military connection.

For more information on joining the choir or hiring us for events, you can find us on Facebook or you can email us

Born in 2000 in North  Yorkshire, Charlotte Potter is rapidly gaining the highest acclaim for her performances in the UK and overseas. Charlotte recently finished her training at The Guildhall School of Music &  Drama, and before this, attended the prestigious Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester.

In 2017, Charlotte was honoured to sing at Westminster’s Central Hall, London and 2018 saw her singing at the Proms in the Priory with the London Gala Orchestra.  In 2019 she was invited, by Chesterfield Philharmonic Choir, to sing with Lesley Garrett.

Charlotte has been invited for four summers to perform a number of recitals in Bagni di Lucca, Italy. In 2020 Charlotte appeared in Season 7 of ITV’s Endeavour, playing the role of an Oxford University Music undergraduate.

In 2022, Charlotte was part of a SATB recording of ‘A Song for the Commonwealth’ ‑ heard around the UK and Commonwealth as beacons were lit in celebration of the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Charlotte has had the great honour of joining the Band of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers at Durham Cathedral as their soloist for the Festival of Remembrance for 3 years, and has been the principal soloist for 2 years at The Great North Proms at the O2 City Hall, Newcastle.

Charlotte first performed at Ripon Cathedral in June 2024 to celebrate the anniversary of D-Day and again for the Festival of Remembrance in November. She is delighted to be back singing in this beautiful cathedral again tonight.

Izzy Howard is a British violinist who has extensively performed as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician. She has enjoyed playing in various international festivals around the world including the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival, the Mozarteum Festival, Virtuoso Belcanto, Blenio Classical, the Curtis Institute Young Artist Program and was a Prizewinner at the 2020 and 2021 Verao Classico in Lisbon. She made her concerto debut performing the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Stratford-upon-Avon Symphony Orchestra in 2022. In autumn 2025 she will give a series of concerts performing Brahms Double Concerto with Danushka Erdirisinghe with orchestras around the country.

Last year Izzy gave a series of recitals in Canada with the sponsorship of the Elton John Foundation and Sir Elton John Global Exchange Programme with venues including the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre and Mazzoleni Concert Hall. Other recent chamber performances have seen her performing at Wigmore Hall, LSO St Luke’s, Kings Place and the Royal-over-Seas League and alongside such established names as Jack Liebeck and Voces8.

Since playing on the London Symphony Orchestra’s prestigious string scheme in 2022/23 Izzy has enjoyed playing in a variety of orchestral settings. As an orchestral musician she is now playing as part of the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Britten Symphonia.

In 2024 Izzy finished her Masters degree at the Royal Academy of Music in London studying with Jack Liebeck and Clio Gould.

North Skelton Band

The current North Skelton Band draws on the rich and successful brass band heritage of East Cleveland, founded on the ironstone mines of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Emerging as an independent contesting band in the 1980’s from its beginnings as the original North Skelton junior band (under the name “Langbaurgh Brass”), the band returned to its roots with a change of name to North Skelton Band on 1st October 2008. The original North Skelton band, following a period of great success under the sponsorship of British Steel Teesside, had by this time sadly disbanded.

The most recent development in the band’s evolution has been the merger with Lockwood Brass, itself formed in 2000 from the successful merger of Yarm and District with Lingdale Silver Band. The consolidated and improved playing lineup contested under the North Skelton banner and became the Northern Area first section champions in 2024. Concerts continued to be performed under both the North Skelton and Lockwood Brass names fulfilling previously booked engagements. 

It is with a sense of great pride that the merged band personnel announce the renaming of the band as East Cleveland Brass, recognising both the heritage on which we are built and the combined solidarity of our current membership in continuing to develop a community based, quality musical organisation, based in Lingdale in East Cleveland, representing the spirit and ethos of the very special part of the world which gives us our “ironstone” foundations.

The band proudly boasts a number of players who have been associated with predecessor bands for over 50 years. It is also pleased to include younger, equally talented musicians in its ranks!

Today marks the last public appearance under the North Skelton Band name but equally heralds the start of an exciting new chapter in the band’s history.

“Forged from iron. Honed in brass”

Mark Sidwell – Born in 1972 Mark started playing the trumpet at the age of 8, moving quickly over to the cornet. After studying conducting with Major Peter Parkes, Mark accepted an invitation at the age of 20, to become the resident conductor of the Northeast based Championship section band, Northumbria Police.

Mark has conducted ever since and has continually enjoyed various conducting posts through all of the grading sections.

Today Mark divides his time between freelance performance as a brass player, conducting and teaching brass instrumentalists both privately and in many local schools.

Originally from Bradford, Dr Richard Martin spent two years as the organ scholar at Leeds RC Cathedral before studying at Durham University where he obtained MEng and PhD degrees in engineering.

At Durham he was the Director of Music at the Catholic Chaplaincy and studied organ with James Lancelot and piano with Ruth Armishaw.

He is a Forensic Electrical Engineer and lives in Nidderdale with his wife and three children.