KENDAL Choral Society’s spring concert remembers the fallen of the First World War.

Conducted by Alan Gardner, Saturday’s (April 12, 7.30pm) Kendal Parish Church concert is KCS’s contribution to the commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the 1914-18 conflict.

The music is by two composers with a Cambridge connection - John Rutter’s well-known Requiem and Philip Ledger’s Requiem: A Thanksgiving for Life, first performed by Kings College Choir on Remembrance Day 2007, and apparently performed for the first time in the north of England.

During the last 10 years the popular Kendal choir has donated £3,500 to Westmorland Music Council’s grant fund for young musicians, and as part of the choir’s continued commitment to encouraging young performers, three rising talents will take to the stage alongside the choristers on Saturday - Kirsty McLean, William White and Daniel Crompton.

Soprano Kirsty, who attended Kendal’s Queen Katharine School before going to Chethams at Manchester, is well-known locally as a past winner of both the Jim Noble and Keldwyth awards. She now studies singing at London’s Trinity Conservatoire.

Tenor William, also a former QKS student, is studying Classics at Queen’s College, Oxford, where he won a Choral Exhibition and sings with the college choir.

Daniel Crompton - another former QKS pupil - will play cello in the orchestra.

In addition to the music, KCS stages Kendal Choral Remembers, in particular the 316 men who gave their lives and are named on the town’s war memorial. This part of the evening includes excerpts from poems, letters and diaries with a Westmorland connection: some written by Arthur Somervell, Arthur Simpson and T Howard Somervell, who all worked in the casualty clearing hospitals on the Front and saw at first hand the horrors of the reality of the fighting. The audience will also hear a letter written by a 12-year-old boy from Sedgwick, to his brother, fighting on the front. The letter details life at home; his brother was killed before the letter arrived. Stephen Lockwood has put together a photographic sequence to accompany the words.

Tickets at the door or on 01539-739822.