On 21st February,RIBI President Eve Conway came to visit our club.

There were 23 clubs represented at the meeting with over 140 people present. During her address, she presented Past District Governor Fraser Dukes with a Distinguished Service award for his tireless work in the End Polio Now Campaign.

It is an often used cliche to say that our young people have amazing talent and, in the young musicians competition, they get better every year. On February 4th, at the       Wolverhampton schools music service hub, superlatives were very much in evidence. The 6 vocalists and 4 instrumentalists provided a full audience of  parents and Rotarians with stunning performances that did indeed prove that the standards of musicianship and singing just go on reaching ever greater levels of accomplishment. The adjudicators, Jerry Hobbs and James Maddison had a severe test of their judging skills when deciding who were to go forward to the district final, which is due to be held at 2pm on march 5th in the Centenary theatre, Wrekin college, Sutherland avenue, Wellington. The standards were so high that     district organiser Rotarian Robyn Davies readily agreed to 2 of the singers to go forward. The winning   vocalist was Abigail Strudwicke,

sponsored by the Wolverhampton club. Abigail is head girl at Thomas Telford school. She is no stranger to us as she won the competition last year, as a result of which she also performed at the district conference in Llandudno. Her selection of songs this year was ‘voi che sapete’ by Mozart, ‘the child and the twilight’ by Parry and ’til there was you’ by Meredith Wilson. The runner up, also going forward to the district final was Jacob Kohli, who attends Highfields school. Jacob is sponsored by the Wolverhampton St. Georges club and his choice was ‘the vagabond’ by R. Vaughan Williams, ‘down by the sally gardens,’ arranged by Carol Barratt and ‘it’s hard to speak my heart’ by Jason Robert Brown. The winning   instrumentalist was trumpet player Cameron Chin-see, a pupil at St. Peters collegiate school. sponsored by the Wednesfield club, Cameron thrilled us with crystal clear renditions of ‘sonata in d’ by Giuseppe Torelli and ‘ballade’ by John Golland. This was an occasion were a number of clubs in the Wolverhampton area gave enthusiastic backing and we are indebted to the Bilston and   Wolverhampton west, Sedgley and Wombourne, Stafford knot, Tettenhall, Wednesfield, Willenhall and Wolverhampton St. Georges clubs for their generous support. The competition also relies on the wonderful support given to us by the Wolverhampton schools music service in the provision of the facilities at the music school and a     special mention must be made of the redoubtable singing teacher Brenda Arnold who gave piano     accompaniment to every one of the 6 vocalists!     PDG Richard Green