Members of The Farm to join LIPA students for Christmas performance

The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts’ (LIPA) Christmas Concert is set for an emotional finale with members of The Farm joining the LIPA Big Band and strings for a special performance of All Together Now at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on 10 December.   

Vocalist and frontman Peter Hooton and guitarist Keith Mullin will perform their iconic anthem alongside LIPA students. Keith, who is also a senior lecturer at LIPA, says he’s looking forward to it: “The LIPA Christmas Concert is an extravaganza that screams Christmas. It’s a musical variety show that tips its hat to all those Christmas shows you used to see on TV. It’s not the sort of thing Peter and I would normally find ourselves involved in, but we like the idea of doing it and giving it a bit of a twist, especially in such an amazing venue.”   

All Together Now is a peace anthem that was inspired by the truce between British and German troops on Christmas Day in 1914, during the First World War. Released in 1990, Keith says it’s not a traditional Christmas song: “It wasn’t released as a Christmas single, it just happened to be a song about something that happened at Christmas. It has a very humanist message, an anti-war message that unfortunately remains relevant. It’s a very powerful song and I think performing with the students, the different generations together, will have a real impact.”   

The concert will be raising funds for Fans Supporting Foodbanks with all the proceeds from the sale of programmes, which will have a suggested price of £6, being donated to the food poverty charity.   

Fans Supporting Foodbanks is a grassroots initiative set up by independent Everton and Liverpool supporters' groups. Keith says he and Peter were keen to get them involved. “We know the people who run the charity very well and have watched them grow over the years from being just this embryonic charity with just a few fans collecting food outside a pub on match days to this organisation that has inspired similar initiatives at clubs across the country. We spoke to LIPA, who were looking for a way for the concert to have a real connection with the community and they were right behind the idea. There’s a lot of hunger in this city and a donation will make a real difference to someone’s life this Christmas.”  

LIPA’s Christmas Concert was first performed in 2003 and has become the Institute’s most popular public performance. It celebrates its 20th anniversary by moving to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, its biggest ever stage, to enable even more people to enjoy the festivities.  

The annual feel-good, family concert features the LIPA Big Band, strings, choirs and dancers performing new arrangements of Christmas songs, festive classics and carols from across the ages. Taking place in the early evening, it’s perfectly timed for everyone in the family to round off their weekend with some Christmas cheer and still get an early night ahead of school or work the next day.   

The event is being sponsored by Dolphin Removals. The Liverpool and Manchester based company has arranged for seventy Ukrainian adults and children from refugee families to see the concert for free. 

The LIPA Christmas Concert is at 5pm on Sunday 10 December at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. Tickets are available from the Philharmonic Box Office with prices ranging from £6 to £20.