TOMORROW night, at 7.30pm, the 23rd civic carol concert takes place at the Riviera Centre, Torquay.

Tickets are £3 and are available at the box office. I've given my short Christmas talk at every concert and look forward to contributing to a very worthy cause.

Organised by Torbay Brass Band. The money raised will go to Help For Heroes, and a memorial to the lost seamen of Brixham.

Others taking part are Torbay Police Choir, Street Beat, and Ellacombe Junior School Performing Arts Group. Leon Winston is the compere and the occasion is an excellent prelude to the Festive Season celebration.

Yes, tomorrow is the civic carol concert and once again the occasion promises to be a memorable community happening.

As far as I'm concerned music can say it all. It really is the barometer of human emotion, lending a special intensity to words or wordlessly expressing love, joy or sadness. And I believe it can celebrate the character of a season.

I was reared on classical music. My grandfather's mandolin band played at Dellers Cafe, Paignton in the 1920s. And dad was a master of the mandolin.

But, as most readers of my column know, I'm a great fan of Elgar. His music constantly takes me on to the Malvern Hills.

Listening to the cello concerto I'm back on the Worcestershire Beacon with evening closing on the Midland Shires.

Lights are coming on in city, town, village, and isolated farms. Elgar's concerto sets the seal on that remarkable vision.

A Welsh male voice choir singing in the old language can bring my mother out of the Yuletide shadows.

Often when I'm in the country only music can express what I feel. It goes way beyond words.

Yes, choirs, solo voices, opera, musicals, orchestras and brass bands can take me out of myself into a spiritual dimension. And the skylark rising on its song has found eternity in Vaughan Williams' 'The Lark Ascending'.

Words set to music can move us to tears, lift us out of depression, bring an old romance alive again; resurrect lost friends and relatives; and lend a glow to a celebration.

When I hear a brass band playing as the year comes to an end I'm walking the Lancashire Fells on a Sunday morning. In the early 1950s I was in Preston on a soccer trial with Preston North End.

So, whenever a brass band opens up, that landscape of factory chimneys and misty hills reassembles behind my eyes.

But I couldn't imagine Christmas without the carol singing. The voices have the magic of the festive season, from the primary school choir to the Cathedral choir.

And it all dovetails with the church bells ringing out those 'tidings of comfort and joy'.

The music goes straight to the heart and never fails to make me aware of the Yuletide rising and bringing us closer to other people.

So come along to the Riviera International Centre this evening and meet kindred spirits. And after giving my brief talk I hope I'll find the spirit of Christmas in one of the optics behind the bar.

Well, the festive season music is the bond uniting all generations. The civic carol concert has proved that December after December. And Torbay Brass Band is warming up to keep Christmas evergreen with music that never ages. And the choir will be in full voice.

Meet me for an evening full of human warmth.

Quoted from the Herald Express on 14/12/09.