MALVERN’S Trench Choir celebrated American Independence Day with a concert at the Clarence Park retirement village in Malvern Link.

The concert commemorating the American contribution to World War One, together with a tribute to the role of women during the war.

Trench Choir has been researching and performing the songs of 100 years ago since 2014 and has built up a repertoire of over 70 evocative tunes.

At this concert the audience were treated in the first half to suffragette songs from before the war, work songs by women, celebrations of the role of nurses during the war and the bittersweet Roses of Picardy.

The second half focussed on how America kept out of the war initially, with the haunting Irving Berlin pacifist song Down Below, before moving on to how war fever built up with the forceful Over There, and how the human cost of war was symbolised in Hello Central Get Me No Mans Land.

Mayor Coun Cynthia Palmer attended and paid tribute to the research and singing by the choir.

Es Hoyle of the choir said: "Researching 1917 has been fascinating, and there were some eye-opening readings amongst the songs on the 4th.

"The choir has worked hard to learn the American songs, which are of a very different style from the British songs before 1917."