Artists

Please install the latest version of the Adobe Flash Player clicking here

Ryedale District Council supports the Ryedale Festival.

Welcome to the Ryedale Festival, this year celebrating its 30th anniversary with a very varied programme of events held in the many superb venues of this area of North Yorkshire.

Over the past 30 years, with the loyal support of its audience, it has grown into one of the most successful of all rural festivals so it seems appropriate that we begin our anniversary celebrations with the greatest of all operas about rural life - Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. A captivating opera, which brings to life the world of the forest and the animals which live there, it also introduces the theme of the festival - ‘The Animal Kingdom’. Great composers of all periods have been inspired to depict the animal world in music and our programme features works such as the Schubert’s Trout Quintet, Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, Ravel’s Histoires Naturelles, Saint- Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Berio’s Opus Zoo! A choir drawn from primary schools across Ryedale will open the festival with a performance of Horovitz’s cantata, Captain Noah and his floating Zoo and our Community Opera is entitled A Pig’s Tale.

We welcome many exciting performers – both established and emerging. The acclaimed Elias String Quartet will be in residence, as will the renowned clarinettist Julian Bliss; among many other distinguished instrumentalists we welcome Howard Shelley and Kenneth Hamilton. An outstanding line-up of singers includes Sir Thomas Allen, Dame Emma Kirkby, Joan Rodgers, Ben Johnson, Michael George and Julie Kennard. On a larger scale, we welcome back the Orchestra of Opera North, Northern Sinfonia, Yorkshire Baroque Soloists and (for their festival debut) the Ampleforth and Ryedale Choir . The festival also features some of the most talented of the new generation of performers, many of them performing in our series of Coffee Concerts.

Three concerts have been specially devised for our 30th anniversary festival by former Artistic Directors - Geoffrey Emerson, Malcolm Layfield and Justin Doyle. We look forward to welcoming them all back to Ryedale, along with many familiar faces from past festivals who will be joining them for a trip down memory lane. There are other anniversaries to mark too: festival events will observe the 200th anniversary of the birth of Franz Liszt, the 400th anniversary of the death of the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria and the 25th anniversary of the death of Harold Arlen.

Other musical highlights include a ‘Day of Song’ and the world premiere of a new piece evoking the North Yorkshire landscape by Eduardo Niebla. The concept of the Triple Concert at Castle Howard is this year also extended to a Double Concert at Sledmere. Literary events and talks include Rohan McCullough’s one woman tour de force about the life of Vera Brittain, a talk by Lucy Beckett on the Romantic poets and a lighthearted tribute to Joyce Grenfell. We welcome the poet Ruth Padel for a look at the animal kingdom from a literary angle and lovers of the visual arts will be able to enjoy three different exhibitions running throughout the festival period.

Our Reaching Ryedale project (in association with Live Music Now) will involve several young musicians in taking music to those who are unable to attend festival events -performing short and informal concerts at venues across Ryedale, including residential homes for the elderly, centres for disabled adults and special schools. We are very grateful to all the supporters, sponsors and volunteers who enable us to present such a broad programme of events.

I look forward to some inspiring summer days of music-making and to seeing you all there.

Christopher Glynn.

Photographs - Christopher Glynne:  Joan Rogers - photo, Anne-Marie Le Blé:   Sir Thomas Allen:  Dame Emma Kirkby:  Malcolm Layfield