Tickets go on sale for the 2019 Swaledale Festival on Monday with national and international stars booked to perform.
The two-week festival encompasses a wide range of music and other art-forms.
The North’s favourite folk music star Kathryn Tickell performs at Tennants in Leyburn with her new band The Darkening, and the world music guitarist Antonio Forcione brings his quartet to Grinton Church.
The London Tango Trio, featuring classical guitar great Craig Ogden, also appears in Grinton, as does the legend of flamenco guitar, Paco Peña.
The violinist Tasmin Little, who has recently announced her imminent retirement, plays solo pieces by Telemann, Bach, Ysaÿe and Roxanna Panufnik, and Alexander Goehr will attend the world premiere performance of his Fifth Quartet – a new Swaledale Festival commission – given by the Villiers String Quartet.
The baritone Roderick Williams and soprano Rowan Pierce sing Beethoven, Schumann and Hugo Wolf in Richmond’s Influence Church, and the superb Armonico Consort performs Purcell’s beautiful Dido and Aeneas and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in Richmond’s Parish Church.
The Esbjerg Ensemble travels from Denmark to perform two concerts – one of which features new arrangements of Mahler’s 10th Symphony and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and Stravinsky’s original four hands scoring of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring will be performed by pianists Richard Uttley and Kate Whitley.
BBC Young Musicians past and present feature prominently: pianist Lauren Zhang plays Chopin, Brahms and Ravel, star cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Friends perform chamber music by Beethoven, Fauré and Dvořák, and violinist Jennifer Pike brings her new collaboration with top Indian musicians to Swaledale.
There are three brass bands, local folk groups, a choir and several children’s events as well as film, drama, dance, exhibitions, workshops, talks and guided walks in the glorious countryside.
The Swaledale Festival takes place from May 25 to June 8. Details and tickets are available from Monday at www.swalefest.org
