It took a while to get going - thanks to a live appearance on TV, no less, but the Big Sing children's choir event in Parliament Street got the BBC Music Live weekend off to a tuneful and sunny start.

Around 1,200 children from schools in York and from others across Yorkshire, joined together to sing a selection of songs in front of a huge stage outside Marks and Spencer in Parliament Street.

Dressed in bright T-shirts and singing out loud in the hot sun, the massed choirs delivered a specially-written song called Cool Tykes, a Yorkshire Calypso, for the TV cameras.

The start of the main event was held off until the cameras were ready to roll for yesterday's lunchtime edition of Look North and there then followed a programme of other songs as crowds of shoppers and parents gathered in the street.

All the choirs had learned the four main songs of the programme in their own rehearsals and got the chance to see how they sounded with several hundred other voices.

The event was organised by the City of York Council Performing Arts Service and funded by the National Foundation for Youth Music.

Updated: 08:40 Friday, May 25, 2001