• Our Voice choir at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust won Hallé Workplace Choir Competition
• Choir spent five weeks rehearsing and performed songs including Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N’ Roses
• Winning prize sees Our Voice perform with the Hallé on Friday 13 December

The Our Voice Choir at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust have won a special award from Manchester’s prestigious orchestra, The Hallé.

The choir, made up of NHS staff from across the Trust, won the Hallé Workplace Choir Competition, which invites businesses and organisations from across the North to compete for the chance to perform on stage with the Hallé at The Bridgewater Hall on Friday 13 December.

Each choir is paired with a professional Choral Conductor, where they rehearse two songs in the lead up to the competition.

Reverend Catherine Binns, Deputy Head Chaplain at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, said:

It means a huge amount to the choir. Our Voice work really hard, we often don’t all sing together so quite often things like competitions and rehearsals are the last thing we all sing together.

“As people will know, the NHS has been through so much over the last few years, we’re still going through a lot of pressure, but it’s just unbelievable what we’ve been through and to win this representing Bolton NHS Foundation Trust is something that we work hard for.

“To perform at the Bridgewater Hall with The Halle Orchestra is a thing that dreams are made of.

The choir were conducted by Jane Hampson and performed arrangements of Mary Sat a Rockin’ by Greg Gilpin and Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N’ Roses.

Jane added:

We’re absolutely delighted that Our voice NHS Bolton Hospital choir have won this award this year. It means so much as this choir represents the hospital at quite a number of events. They do baby memorial services, they’re doing Christmas tree lights, they’re doing adult bereavement services. They really do support the local community, and I am thrilled to bits for them because they do work so hard.