MAY
2025
News
Once again, our Christmas Concert this year will be a FREE event as we say a massive 'thank you' to all our family, friends and audiences for their support over the last 12 months.
The concert takes place on Friday 19th December at Trinity Methodist Church, Castleford, from 7:30pm.
Tickets for the event must be booked in advance. As usual, due to the capacity of the church, we have a limit on the number of tcikets that will be available, so to guarantee your seat and avoid the waiting list, book yours early!
September 2025 marks the start of our 60th Anniversary year! We're currently working on a number of ways to celebrate this milestone - why not join our 60th Anniversary mailing list to be the first to find out what we have planned?
We'd love to hear from our many past members, especially those who would be willing to recall some of their favourite memories of CYM (YMS) for our anniversary film, to be recorded throughout the next 12 months. Get in touch if you'd like to be involved!
And of course, we'd love to see you at our Anniversary Concert in 2026 - details to follow soon!
To kick start our 60th Anniversary, we enjoyed a fantastic trip to the Isle of Man in July. A big thank you to the Rushen Silver Brass for inviting us to perform with them on the Saturday night, and for recommending we perform on the beach at Port Erin on the Sunday morning! Despite the cancellation of our ferry on our way home, we had a fantastic weekend, and one which our members will remember for many years to come!
Money raised over the previous 12 months enabled CYM to substantially subsidise this trip, ensuring the trip was affordable for all our members. Many thanks to those who attended our concerts and took part in the raffles and retiring collections for your generosity!
Carlton Lanes Concert Features in Local Paper
Once again, our annual presentation concert took place at Carlton Lanes Shopping Centre this year. Many thanks to everyone who supported us and for all the wonderful feedback we received after the event.
This year, we were very lucky to have our concert featured in the local newspaper, the Pontefract and Castleford Express, in an article written by Martin Gosney. An online version of the article can be found here.
With all money raised, after expenses, going towards our trip to the Isle of Man next month, we thank our supporters once again for their generosity.
Isle of Man Fundraising Concert
CYM are very excited to announce plans for a concert trip to the Isle of Man in July this year.
To make this as affordable as possible for our members, we hosted a fundraising concert at St Joseph's RC Church Hall, Castleford on Friday 4th April, to help us subsidise the cost. The free concert featured a wide range of music from our Concert Band and Choir, and our generous audience helped us raise over £350 towards funding the trip, via a raffle, tombola and retiring collection.
Open Letter - Closure of Castleford Civic Centre
Following the recent (unannounced) decision by Wakefield Council to close Castleford Civic Centre in October this year, we have written an open letter to the leader of Wakefield Council expressing our sadness and concern regarding the impact this will have on groups like ours. Although we don't expect it to make much of a difference in terms of the decision to close the Centre, we don't want history to record that there were no objections.
Many thanks to the other local groups who offered their names as signatories to this letter; Encore Theatre Company, Castleford Male Voice Choir, Company A Theatre, Castleford Singers, and Pauline Quirke Academy, Wakefield.
We'd love to hear your views regarding the closure of the Centre. If you'd like to leave a comment, you can do so by clicking here.
If you're a member, past member, a patron or have attended one of our concerts recently, you can make a massive difference to us by spending just a minute or two leaving us a Facebook and Google review. Even choosing the 5 stars option without leaving a comment will make a big difference to our group, increasing our profile online and helping us attract new members. Please click the links below, thank you!
Musical Youth International (MYI) were a Michigan based performance organization who took large numbers of music students on elaborate overseas tours during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. In 1966, they paid a visit to Castleford as part of their European tour and performed a concert on 7th July at the Girls Modern. It was during a post-concert reception at the neighbouring Boys Modern that the idea to form Castleford Young Musicians came about.
MYI alumni Jim Roth, has been collating vast amounts of information relating to MYI and has produced a very detailed file of the 1966 tour. The full document, plus extracts relating to the visit to Castleford can be found by clicking the links below. A big thank you to Mr Roth for his time and effort putting this together.
Our Choir Members Don't Just Sing...!!
A big thank you to Choir member Jacob (aged 9) who has used ChatGPT to create a poem to advertise our group.
We love that he enjoys being part of CYM enough to put something like this together...why not join him and the rest of us on a Friday evening - we're always happy to welcome new members to our Choir and Concert Band.
Click the our logo on the right to read the poem in full...
We are currently recruiting singers and wind instrumentalists of any age to come and join the choir and band. If you are interested, we'd love to see you at one of our rehearsals (either to take part, or just sit and listen!) We rehearse every Friday evening (excluding school holidays and concert nights) at St Joseph's Primary School in Castleford, from 7:15pm.
For more information, please watch our promo video or contact us for more details. There's never been a better time to join!
Representatives from CYM were in attendance at the launch event for Wakefield Council's 'Our Year 2024' campaign recently. We're looking forward to being involved in promoting the vast range of creative arts available in the Wakefield District throughout 2024. Look out for more information soon. Further details can be found on the following link: https://experiencewakefield.co.uk/our-year-2024/
Not to be outdone by the band, some of our choir members have been busy creating a virtual performance of their own, recording their parts for 'Colours of the Wind'. A big thank you and well done to you all, and to Sarah Clarkson once again for putting them all together. 
