Prize-winning soprano joins the Ten Tors Orchestra

The Ten Tors Orchestra will be joined by acclaimed soprano Ruby Hughes at the Tavistock Music and Arts Festival gala concert at St Eustachius Church, Tavistock on Saturday 2 May at 7.30pm. Ruby appears fresh from her debut with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra and winning both first prize and the audience prize at the prestigious London Handel Festival 2009 Singing Competition. The Ten Tors Orchestra, conducted by Simon Ible, will perform Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, his last and greatest composition which requires exceptional soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists. Ruby is joined by Carolyn Dobbin, a specialist in music of the 18th century, both of whom fully realise this expectation. They will also perform solo arias from Handel's operatic oratorio Theodora in this programme that starts with the ever-popular Albinoni Adagio for Strings and Organ. Organist Jonathan Watts is also featured in Handel's F major Organ Concerto. Simon Ible, Conductor of the Ten Tors Orchestra and Director of Peninsula Arts at the University of Plymouth, said: "Pergolesi's setting of the Stabat Mater is passionate, dramatic and, at times, sumptuous.