Cheltenham Music Festival (5th–14th July, venues in Cheltenham, UK), this year celebrating its 75th birthday, remains one of the UK’s most imaginative not to mention prestigious music festivals. This year’s programme is as busy as ever, with more than 60 events and 650 performers. The programme includes an abundance of new music, including 20 major premieres.
On 5th the Nash Ensemble will give the first performance of a new work for flute and string trio by Judith Weir. The concert will also contain a tribute to the much-missed Oliver Knussen, with a performance of his Masks Op. 3 for solo flute. On the same day will be the chance to hear the premiere of Dani Howard’s Gates of Spring by the London Symphony Orchestra, which has been commissioned as a roof-raiser by Classic FM.
1956 marked the festival’s first commissioning of a female composer, Thea Musgrave. More than 60 years later, and as part of her own 90th birthday year celebrations, she has been commissioned to write a trumpet concerto for Alison Balsom and the CBSO, to be performed on 6th. The composer will be in conversation before the concert.
On 9th John Woolrich’s Ostinato will receive its first performance by young pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, a rising star worth watching. Woolrich will also be busy at the festival as Composer Academy Director. The eight emerging composers will work with him and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective to produce new works that will be performed as part of Composium, a symposium for composers, publishers, artists, managers and members of the public on 10th. That event will also comprise of talks, panel discussions and networking opportunities with figures that will include Thea Musgrave, musicologist and broadcaster Katy Hamilton, James Murphy (Chief Executive, Royal Philharmonic Society), Lucy Schaufer (Mezzo-soprano and Artistic Director, Wild Plum Arts), Hannah Kendall (Composer), Vanessa Reed (CEO, PRS Foundation), Denzyl Feigelson (Special Advisor, Apple Inc and iTunes), Zoe Martlew (Composer) and Harriet Wybor (PRS for Music – Classical).
Other premieres to look enjoy will include Alex Mills’s Crossing Over (6th), Konstantia Gourzi’s Call of the Bees (7th), works by Einojuhani Rautavaara and Betsy Jolas at a Classical Mixtape event (8th), Grace-Evangeline Mason’s Midnight Spires (9th), Freya Waley-Cohen’s Reflection on Christus Factus Est (10th), Anna Clyne’s Snake & Ladder (11th), Jonathan Dove’s Youth Gone (12th) and Dobrinka Tabakova’s Highland Pastorale (13th). The opening of the festival and its 75th anniversary will also be marked with the performance of a new fanfare for trumpets, the result of a composition competition on 5th.
More information and tickets are available here.