FOR those who have never heard the glorious student sounds of Chetham's School of Music it will be well worth catching up with the gifted musicians at Grange-over-Sands next week.

Under the guidance of Chetham's director of music, Stephen Threlfall, the Friday, May 6 (8pm) Grange-over-Sands Concert Club event at the Victoria Hall, puts some of the finest young musicians in the land centre stage.

Chetham’s is the UK’s largest and leading specialist music school offering a world class music programme, located in an oasis of creativity in the heart of Manchester city centre, where beautiful music, amazing buildings steeped in history and talented youngsters, meet.

The school's medieval buildings date back to 1421 around which the school still revolves.

Educationally, it origins hark back to a hospital school and library, which was founded in 1653 by Humphrey Chetham, twice the High Sheriff of Manchester.

The 20th Century brought huge expansion in educational opportunity and at one stage three schools shared the yard: Manchester Grammar School, Nicholls Hospital School and Chetham’s Hospital School, where boys still wore traditional Tudor dress. Slowly, but surely, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, music became its prime function, helped by the strong musical tradition of Manchester’s magnificent Hallé and BBC Philharmonic orchestras as well as the city’s music colleges, which amalgamated in the 1970s into the prestigious Royal Northern College of Music.

In 1969 it was decided to change the boys’ grammar school to a fully co-educational boarding specialist music school.

These days Chetham’s enjoys a reputation as a celebrated and internationally renowned specialist music establishment with one of its many, major successes being virtuoso violinist, Jennifer Pike. The Stockport-born star is a terrific ambassador for the school and is grateful for her time spent under its revered roof: “Chetham’s shaped me - I went there when I was eight and I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without it. It's an absolutely compelling place to prepare you for the tough world of the music business.”

“Winning the BBC Young Musician of the Year at 12 gave me wonderful performance opportunities around the country and abroad. The school gave me the flexibility to let me grow.”

The Grange programme includes Beethoven's Seven Variations on Bei Mannern, welche Liebe Fuhlen; Chopin's Sonata for piano and cello in G minor, works by Handel, Debussy, Grieg, Mozart, Poulenc and more.

Admission at the door.