‘ABSOLUTELY awesome’ was the reaction of Teigbridge Rock Choir members who played a hand in so far raising £45,000 for Comic Relief during a weekend festival of music.

The team behind Rock Choir, the most popular contemporary choir in the UK, is delighted to announce that they have so far raised £45,000 for Comic Relief.

For the first time the Rock Choir team delivered a live virtual weekend festival, packed full of more than 24 hours of interactive content all delivered by the Rock Choir team using technology skills they developed during lockdown to deliver their online choir sessions.

The event involved different Rock Choir leaders from across England, Scotland and Wales going live at different times over the weekend and handing over the broadcast to each other in shifts, culminating in the final live concert, professionally produced and directed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre featuring a live band.

Richard Toomer, who is Rock Choir leader for the singers of Teignmouth and Newton Abbot, said: ‘The festival for comic relief was absolutely awesome yes and to raise £45,000 was a real bonus and something that we are all very proud of.

‘With the whole festival being online it was really easy for our choir members and their families to get involved in all of the activities.

‘Many Devon rockies took part in the online vocal workshops, the cooking classes, cocktail making classes and I know they really enjoyed the workshops with Gary Wilmott looking at building confidence when you sing and perform and stage craft etc.

‘I also know that many of the local rockies were in the “virtual” audience on the Sunday night for the live streamed concert that we did from The Rep theatre in Birmingham.

‘This concert attracted an an online audience of over 1,000 people which was really nice as well.

‘As far as my own contribution to the festival weekend went I was involved in the live streamed concert on the Sunday night and I did some violin recordings for “Saturday night is music night”.

‘Apart from raising money for charity which is so important at the moment it was another big event to keep our choir members all connected and feeling “together” at such a difficult time for so many people.

‘We have many members who live alone and away from family so they have found weekly choir sessions and big events like this festival a bit of a lifeline and something to look forward to each week.’

The public can still donate to the Rock Choir Comic Relief Fundraiser by donating here at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/rockchoirweekend. All profits from the event go to Red Nose Day.