Special night in Chichester to mark Barbra Streisand's 80th birthday

Barbra Streisand Celebration is at the CFT on November 18 at 7.30pm when the BBC Concert Orchestra and vocalists Katie Birtill, Louise Dearman and Graham Bickley salute the Broadway and Hollywood icon. One of the best-selling artists of all time, with 145 million records sold worldwide, Streisand has won countless awards, including two Oscars, ten Grammies, five Emmie s and nine Golden Globes.

The night will feature rich new orchestral treatments of her best-loved songs including Evergreen, Tell Him, Don't Rain On My Parade and songs from Funny Girl, plus successes from her film and stage career and chart hits she had with Barry Gibb, Donna Summer, Celine Dion and the classic duet with Judy Garland.

Richard Balcombe and singer Graham Bickley have put the programme together. “We are fans and the reason for this is her 80th birthday,” Richard said. “We've got a company and we've been going for about 12 years and we devise programmes. We do all the musical arrangements and then we sell them to the symphony orchestras. We started with a Burt Bacharach show in 2012. We did a 60s programme. We did an Elton John programme. And we've done Streisand. I'm in the process of putting together a Bee Gees for next year. We've also done a Christmas programme.

“For this one we went through the entire catalogue of everything Barbra Streisand has recorded and we have chosen things which cover all the styles from films to musical theatre to pop songs and so on. We've done the full range. From films we have got two pieces from Yentl. From musical theatre We've Got Don't Rain On My Parade from Funny Girl and we've also got a selection from Hello Dolly. We had to devise the programme into two 45 to 50 minute halves so you really do have to be aware of time. You can't do everything you would want to do. You have to take the best nuggets and make sure that you do get the full range of her career. We could have done two or three other programmes of her work as well. There's just so much to what she has done. We've done Liverpool and Dublin with this one and it goes down really well. People just love the songs with the big orchestral background. It is very lush and very exciting and it's just a huge celebration of a wonderful artist really. She spreads across so many different genres.”

And it is great to be getting back to it: “Graham and I are both freelancers and we didn't work for a whole year because of the pandemic. I did some writing at the time of the pandemic, orchestrations and arrangements and I did a lot for the BBC during that time but it was difficult. I'm towards the end of my career. I've had a really good run at things one way or another and I've loved every bit of it but I know how hard life was for younger musicians and I know that many of them left the business and I know that quite a few of them have not come back.”