English Music Festivals.

There are lots of Music and Art Festivals in Great Britain, from old and classical to new and modern. Here are the most famous of them.

The English Music Festival. It is an annual four day event held over the second May bank holiday, dedicated to the performance of British composers from the mediaeval to the present day with a strong focus on the early to mid twentieth century. Founded and organised by Em Marshall in 2006, the Festival takes place in Dorchester on Thames, Oxfordshire and the surrounding area. Now in its fifth year, the festival is rapidly expanding to become one of Britain’s major classical music festivals, performing many neglected and previously unperformed works by composers as diverse as Britten and Holst to Joseph Holbrooke and Edwin York Bowen. The festival also presents world premiers by contemporary composers such as Mathew Curtis, Cecilia McDowall, Paul Carr and Tom Rose. EMF's concerts are regularly broadcast by BBC Radio 3, and the festival has established relationships with such orchestras as the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Orchestra of St Paul's and City of London Choir, and artists such as David Owen Norris, James Gilchrist and Janice Watson.

The aim of the Festival has been to draw attention to the large amount of neglected, unperformed, and sometimes unpublished works by British composers in the early years of the twentieth Century. Since its inaugural Festival, the EMF has been based in Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester on Thames in Oxfordshire, and concerts are also held in Sutton Courtenay, Radley, and Oxford. The Festival has an average of fifteen concerts a year, and an additional series of fringe talks. The concerts range from small scale recitals to full scale orchestral pieces, and has recently branched into semi staged opera.

Funding for the Festival is based entirely on individual supporters and charitable organisation. The Festival receives no government funding.

The Three Choirs Festival. It is one of the oldest music festivals in the world, has shared between Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester Cathedral for nearly 300 years. The first reference to it is in a local newspaper from 1719, but it's likely this music festival in England has been taking place for even longer. At the heart of the festival is an evening concert, every night, in the hosting cathedral. Choral concerts range from performances of well established classical British choral music to the international repertoire of classical choral music.

Daytime programs during the music festival week include chamber music, opera, theater, organ recitals, talks, exhibitions and special events.In addition to the specially assembled Festival Chorus, participants include top international orchestras, ensembles and artists as well as young performers and groups.

The Royal National Mod.The festival is an annual competitive gathering of Gaelic singers, instrumental musicians, poets, theatre and dance groups and sports teams from all over Scotland. Prizes are awarded in all categories.The festival emphasizes solo and choral singing as well as competitions on traditional Gaelic musical instruments, including the Scottish harp - called the Clársach.In addition to the competition concerts, the gathering attracts some of Scotland's most well known traditional performers and throughout the Mod there is a full "fringe" schedule of concerts and ceilidhs. The Queen is the patron of the Royal National Mod and a member of the Royal Family usually attends.

National Eisteddfod of Wales.This ancient festival of music, singing and the spoken word has a virtually continuous heritage, dating all the way back to 1176. That was when Lord Rhys of Cardigan Castle invited poets and musicians from all over the country to compete for a chair at his high table.Before being formalized into the Welsh National Eisteddfod organization in the 1880s, Eisteddfods were sponsored by noblemen and gentry around the country for more than 800 years.

The modern Eisteddfod includes concerts of all kinds of music, choral singing competitions, poetry, theatre, pageantry and even rock concerts. At least 160,000 people attend one of the most colorful and important events of the cultural year in Wales.

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.The festival organiser Michael Eavis, a farmer in a Somerset valley stated that he decided to host the first festival, then called Pilton Festival, after seeing an open air Led Zeppelin concert at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music 1970.

The first festivals in the 1970s were influenced by hippie ethics and the free festival movement. The festival retains vestiges of this tradition such as the Green Fields area which includes the Green Futures and Healing Field. After the 1970s the festival took place almost every year and grew in size, with the number of attendees sometimes being swollen by gate-crashers.

Leading pop and rock artists have appeared as headline acts with thousands of others appearing on smaller stages and performance areas. The festival has also spawned films and albums and is reported on extensively on television and in newspapers. The size and nature of the festival, held over three or four days in the open air, with performers, crew and paying festival goers staying in tents, caravans and motorhomes, has meant that the weather is significant. It is now attended by around 150,000 people requiring extensive infrastructure in terms of security, transport, water and electricity supply. The majority of staff are volunteers, helping the festival to raise millions of pounds for good causes.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1066