Festival watch;Arts

3rd September 1999, 1:00am

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Festival watch;Arts

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/festival-watcharts-1
Summer may be over, but the festivals still keep coming. The Vale of Glamorgan festival fills the Welsh valleys with music from Sunday to September 11. Set up in 1991 with the intention of introducing listeners to “the changing face of new music”, this year’s events, says director John Metcalf, “look back at some of the remarkable music heard here over the past decade”. As well as repeats of favourite past commissions, this year’s festival will feature Geraint Lewis’s Everyone Sang, a work in memory of Sir Michael Tippett, who died this January.

After the opening New Music Day, which features samba and gamelan workshops (all you need to bring are clapping hands and tapping feet), computer music demonstrations and the chance to play your own instruments in a “scratch” version of Terry Riley’s In C, the festival has a Piano Circus, which stars young pianists from Glamorgan schools.

Outreach work includes a young people’s choir, a saxophone quartet and piano duets.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary, the Windsor festival (September 18 to October 2) trumpets a host of concerts, guided walks, illustrated talks and other activities around Eton College and Windsor Castle. The Eton Boys’ Concert and Berkshire Young Musicians perform at the big events, while special schemes include inspiring primary children with visits by young recorder player Piers Adams and “Travelling by Tuba” - 10 school workshops run by wind and brass experts. The Festival also plans to support final-year GCSE music pupils with composition workshops led by students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

The North Wales International Music festival, September 18 to 25, is a star-studded event held at St Asaph’s Cathedral in Denbighshire. Especially suitable for children are Poulenc’s La Bal Masque and Babar the Elephant, the two Live Music Now! concerts for schoolchildren and Tubalate, a group with two tubas and two euphonium players playing to 450 primary children. For secondary schools, Music Theatre Wales is performing Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and a workshop is available. Students from Ysgol Glan Clwyd high school will attend opera rehearsals. Special ticket prices for young people are available.

Britain’s oldest single city festival, the Norfolk and Norwich, (October 1 to 17) heads towards the millennium with more than 170 arts events. Young people are being encouraged to use their energy and enthusiasm to participate in Festival Band and Festival Voices, Terry Riley’s In C, and a composer’s ensemble, in which composer John Woolwich will be working with visitors on an exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre.

With streets full of acrobats, thesps, comics and madcaps, the festival is a community event which aims to draw in first-timers. Children and young people are being sought for At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers, an exuberant adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s short story using Asian dance, led by Kadam Asian Dance, as well as for Dance to the Music of Time, a production by more than 100 middle school students. No experience necessary. For “Tunnel Vision”, a mural painted by several thousand hands, paints and brushes are provided.

Aleks Sierz

Bookings: Glamorgan, tel: 01446 799100; Windsor, tel: 01753 623400; North Wales, tel: 01745 584508; Norfolk and Norwich,

tel: 01603 764764

Windsor Castle painted by Prince Charles, scene of events during the town’s festival

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