SOPRANO Ruby Hughes will join the Ten Tors Orchestra at this year's Tavistock Music and Arts Festival Gala Concert.

The concert, Wild and Wondrous, offers a programme by Handel, Vivaldi and Albinoni and will be conducted by Simon Ible at St Eustachius Church on Saturday May 1, at 7.30pm.

Ruby will perform arias from Handel's Alcina, including the famous Tornami a vagheggiar as well as Vivaldi's Nulla in mundo pax sincera.

Her performance at Tavistock precedes a full calendar of engagements, including Michal /Saul at the 2011 Buxton Festival with Harry Christophers, Fortuna L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Roggiero / Tancredi at the Theater an der Wien with Christopher Moulds and René Jacobs respectively.

She will be touring with Frieder Bernius in J S Bach's B Minor Mass, and performing Bach Cantatas with Le Concert Lorraine and with Das Neue Orchester and Christoph Spering at the Concertgebouw, and the Leipzig Bach Festival and St Matthew Passion at the London Handel Festival 2010.

The orchestra will also be joined by solo violinist, Mary Eade, performing Vivaldi's Spring and solo organist Jonathan Watts in Handel's concerto The Cuckoo and the Nightingale and Albinoni's Sonata in G minor.

Simon Ible, conductor of the Ten Tors Orchestra and director of Peninsula Arts at the University of Plymouth, said: 'Composers of all ages have been inspired by nature — Vivaldi and Handel were no exception.

'In this concert the freshness of spring is captured in the opening concerto of Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his motet Nulla in mundo pax sincera is full of nature's metaphors.

'Handel beautifully captures the delights of birdsong in his organ concerto The Cuckoo and the Nightingale. With three great soloists, this concert offers a special Baroque treat for May Day.'

Tickets are £17 each (£15 each for Friends of Ten Tors Orchestra and Peninsula Arts, and £5 each for students) and are available from Peninsula Arts Box Office on 01752 585050 or email [email protected]">[email protected] website http://www.peninsula-arts.co.uk">www.peninsula-arts.co.uk and the Wharf, Tavistock, on 01822 611166 or [email protected]">[email protected]