John Sutton (the conductor of this concert) and his wife Jenny, have been taking part and
organising massed Come and Sing concerts every year since 1986, some 36 years (apart from
the Covid years!). Our concerts to date have raised many thousands of pounds for our chosen
Hospices. Our last two concerts have been solely for Hampshire Hospices.
This year we are supporting eight Hampshire Hospices:-
Countess of Brecknock, Andover; Mountbatten Hampshire, West End; Mountbatten Isle of
Wight; Naomi House and Jacksplace, Sutton Scotney; Oakhaven, Lymington; Rowan’s
Portsmouth; St Michael’s , Basingstoke; Winchester Hospice, Winchester.
They, as all UK Hospices, rely totally on donations to supply the services so necessary to
patients as they face life limiting and end of life issues. These services can be supplied at the
hospices, as day care or as an inpatient, or in a patient’s own home. In these challenging times,
raising these funds (often in excess of £8m for each hospice) is proving exceedingly difficult.
Tickets for singers and audience alike are £25 each and VfH Choir is eligible to collect Gift Aid.
We aim to ensure that all ticket monies and donations on concert day go directly to our eight
Hampshire Hospices. All costs (orchestra, soloists, venue, flyers, posters, sound, lighting,
admin etc) are raised in advance by our fantastic team of VfHers who freely give of their time to
organise a wide range of fundraising events and are also very active on concert day.
Our concerts are hugely enjoyed by singers, audiences and our Hospices and are held in
unusual settings where numbers of singers are often greater than those in the audience!
Venues have included Kempton Park Racecourse, Eastleigh Football Ground, Romsey Abbey
and Winchester Cathedral and this year’s concert will take place in the beautiful Sir Harold
Hillier Gardens with around 1000 singers and audience.
The emblem of the hospice movement worldwide is the sunflower, and it is fitting that we use
this flower, in the mouth of a dove, on our posters and flyers, for it is also the National Flower of
Ukraine. These symbols of hope, strength, happiness and peace, combined so magically in Sir
Karl Jenkins’ “The Armed Man, A Mass for Peace” will form the centre of our performance.
We at Voices for Hospices Choir wish to give something back for the joy that singing together
gives us and we are delighted to have this opportunity to support our Hospices! We look
forward to our performance with you and thank you for your generous support.
Voices for Hospices Choir are holding a very special event…
Date: 12th July, 2023
The Voices for Hospices Choir is a not-for-profit company, set up in 2014, to continue the work of the Voices for Hospices movement, started at the Princess Alice Hospice, Surrey in 1986. The original aim of the movement was to raise money and awareness for hospices. Firstly in UK and then gradually across the world. By the 1990’s there were over 600 concerts in 60 countries.
