AIREDALE Symphony Orchestra's spectacular Leeds Town Hall concert on Sunday October 21 (3pm) will commemorate the Orchestra's 120th anniversary and the Armistice that ended the First World War.

ASO was founded in 1898 as Keighley Orchestral Society by influential local musician J P Summerscales. He led rehearsals in the Cycling Club building on Cavendish Street and conducted the Society's concerts in the town's imposing Mechanics Institute and the Hippodrome Theatre until 1923.

Tragically, the Hippodrome was demolished in 1961 and just one year later, the much loved Mechanics Institute was ravaged by fire. The Orchestral Society then presented concerts in the Temperance Hall - it is now a Wetherspoons pub. Audience numbers steadily declined and so the Society's radical solution was to reinvent itself in 1982 as the Airedale Symphony Orchestra. Since then, regular subscription concerts have attracted capacity audiences to Ilkley's King's Hall and Saltaire's Victoria Hall.

Current conductor and artistic director, John Anderson, has notched up twenty seven years at the helm. Anderson's many notable ASO performances have included Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (both with Leeds Philharmonic Chorus), Verdi's Requiem, Mahler's Resurrection Symphony and Beethoven's Choral Symphony. He has also conducted the northern premiere of Anthony Payne's realisation of Elgar's Symphony No 3, and William Kinghorn's "Airedale Variations".

Sunday afternoon's wonderfully varied programme in Leeds Town Hall will include Elgar's Cockaigne Overture, his poignant cantata The Spirit of England, John Williams' Hymn to the Fallen, Walton's stirring Spitfire Prelude and Fugue, and Tchaikovsky's gloriously loud 1812 Overture.

So here's to the next 120 years. Meanwhile, the elegant ivory and silver baton used by J P Summerscales is on permanent show at Keighley's Cliffe Castle Museum.

Tickets £10 - £20 from Leeds Town Hall Box Office on 0113 376 0318 or at www.leedstownhall.co.uk

by Geoffrey Mogridge