February 23, 2026 - 99 views
A beloved North Wales Easter tradition is on the move six decades after it started – but the music will play on.
The Tremeirchion Bach Choir is striking a new note this Good Friday as its landmark annual concert relocates to St Mary’s Church in Denbigh.
The annual performance, first stated in 1965, will see around 50 singers take on one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most demanding masterpieces, the St John’s Passion.
It marks a new chapter for one of the Vale of Clwyd’s longest running traditions which began at Corpus Christi Church in Tremeirchion and moved to St Asaph Cathedral a few years ago.
The concert on April 3 is being made possible thanks to the generosity of the main sponsor, the arts-loving Pendine Park care organisation through the Pendine Arts and Community Trust (PACT).
The trust was set up by Pendine Park proprietors, Mario Kreft MBE and his wife, Gill, to support arts and community events.
This year’s performance will be particularly special for them because Pendine is in the midst of its 40th anniversary celebrations.
The annual production was founded in Tremeirchion by local man Alun Vaughan Jones and Mike Lewis, from Rhyl.
Among the choristers performing that day was Alun’s teenage daughter, Mair Dowell, and 61 years later the retired nurse, who now lives in St Asaph, is still going strong as an alto in the choir and its secretary.
Mair, now 78, said: “It was basically the choir from the church and there was terrible trouble at the first performance on Good Friday 1965 because many of the ladies in the choir insisted on wearing their hats to attend the church and people sitting behind them complained that they couldn’t see the conductor.
“It has been going every Easter since then apart from the Covid year and it did move to St Asaph Cathedral a few years ago but now it has found a new home at St Mary’s, in Lenten Pool, in Denbigh.
“Trystan Lewis took over as our conductor and he’s been a breath of fresh air and has really kept the choir going. I don’t think the choir would still exist but for him.”
Mair, a member of three other choirs St Asaph, Dyffryn Conwy and Mold, remembers her childhood home in Tremeirchion as always being full of music.
“My dad was a builder and he had taught himself to read music. He was known as Alun Byth Gartref, Alun Never At Home, because he was always out singing somewhere.
“He was full of music and my mum, Zillah, was the same. She’d sing in any choir going and I played the organ in the village church from the age of ten.
“It was a wonderful childhood because all these brilliant singers and musicians were always coming to the house.
“Mum and dad were both from Tremeirchion and lived there all their lives – it was only a little village but there was so much going on.
“The only time we haven’t performed at Easter was when Covid hit and even then I went to the church in Tremeirchion on Good Friday and stood outside.”
The choir and their guest musicians perform each Good Friday, alternating between two of Bach’s great oratorios, the St John’s Passion and St Matthew’s Passion.
Conductor Trystan Lewis, who gained a Masters in Music at Liverpool University, said: “It is one of the hardest oratorios there is and for a village choir of about 50 singers to perform something so complicated is quite unique.
“They will be singing with musicians and soloists from Cardiff and Manchester.”
Keeping a choir going these days is difficult, according to Trystan, who works with three other choirs, and he said: “These are challenging times and we’re very grateful to the Pendine Park care organisation for sponsoring us again.
“We used to have funding from the Welsh Arts Council and other organisations but that has dried up and it’s getting tougher and tougher but we are struggling on, holding events to raise money.
“That’s why we are so grateful to Mario and Gill Kreft who have again stepped in to help us out and ensure that this wonderful event, which has been going for over 60 years, will continue, hopefully for another 60 years, here at St Mary’s Church.”
Mario added: “At Pendine Park we believe in putting something back to the local communities here in North Wales and we have supported the St Asaph Music Festival and the Royal International Eisteddfod in Llangollen for a number of years.
“The Good Friday concert by the Tremeirchion Choir is another wonderful event in the region’s artistic and musical calendar and shows how deeply embedded music is in the culture of North Wales and in villages like Tremeirchion.
“Supporting this wonderful Easter tradition fits perfectly with our ethos because music matters just as much to people who live and work in social care and enriching people’s lives, residents and staff alike, is the golden thread that runs through everything we do at Pendine.”
Tickets for the concert are available from Cathedral Frames, St Asaph, or from Mair Dowell on 07768 630055.
