Aldeburgh Festival
The Aldeburgh Festival is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on the main concert hall at Snape Maltings. Beginning in 2007, the festival expanded to include the Faster Than Sound event which highlights experimental and electronic music, and 2010 saw the addition of yet another independent music event, TEDx Aldeburgh Music.
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[edit] History of the Aldeburgh Festival
The Festival was founded in 1948 by the composer Benjamin Britten, the singer Peter Pears and the librettist Eric Crozier. The original intention was to provide a home for their opera company, the English Opera Group, but the vision was soon widened to include readings of poetry, literature, drama, lectures and exhibitions of art. The first festival was held from the 5 June 1948 to the 13 June 1948 and used the Aldeburgh Jubilee Hall, a few doors away from Britten's house in Crabbe Street, as its main venue. It featured a performance of Albert Herring by the English Opera Group; Britten's newly-written St. Nicolas cantata, op.42; and performances by Clifford Curzon and the Zorian String Quartet.
Over the years the festival grew and took in additional venues such as Aldeburgh's fifteenth-century church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul and venues in nearby Orford, Blythburgh and Framlingham. In the mid-1960s the Festival gained a new and much larger concert hall with the conversion of Snape Maltings, which includes one of the largest mid nineteenth century barley malthouses in East Anglia. Most of the building's original character, such as the distinctive square malthouse roof-vents, was retained. The new concert hall was opened by the Queen on 2 June 1967, at the start of the twentieth Aldeburgh Festival.
Two years later, on the first night of the 1969 festival, the concert hall was destroyed by fire. Only the shell of the outer walls remained. For that year the Festival was moved to other local venues but by the following year the hall had been rebuilt and once again it was opened by the Queen, this time at the start of the 1970 festival.
[edit] The festival today
The festival is now operated by Aldeburgh Music, which also runs the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme (formerly the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies), Aldeburgh Residencies - a programme offering bespoke training and development opportunities to UK and international artists - as well as an extensive education programme. Aldeburgh's artist development programmes feed heavily into the June festival and other events throughout the year.
The Aldeburgh Festival retains a unique character, mostly due to its location in rural Suffolk. It also continues to emphasise the presentation of new music, new interpretations and the rediscovery of forgotten music. It has seen the premières of several works by Britten (A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1960; Death in Venice in 1973) and also Harrison Birtwistle's Punch and Judy in 1968, The Io Passion in 2004 and The Corridor in 2009.
The Festival now takes place in several buildings on the new Creative Campus at Snape Maltings, using the newly refurbished industrial buildings as well as the world renowned Snape Maltings Concert Hall. The new Hoffmann Building, which contains The Britten Studio as another performance space also doubles as a recording studio, as well as the Jerwood Kiln Studio, a rehearsal and recording space.
The Festival's current Artistic Director is the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
[edit] Related festival events
Faster Than Sound has been part of the Aldeburgh Festival since 2007. Initially hosted at Bentwaters airbase, it has included artists such as Luke Vibert, Tansy Davies, Mira Calix, Anna Meredith, Venetian Snares and many others.[citation needed]
The inaugural TEDx Aldeburgh Music festival was held on November 6, 2010. Hosted by the TED music director Thomas Dolby and organized by Joana Seguro on behalf of Aldeburgh Music (coincidentally, Thomas Dolby's great-great-grandfather actually built the maltings building at Snape that houses the Britten Studio, which was this year's venue). TEDx Aldeburgh Music included talks from David Toop, Tod Machover, Martyn Ware, William Orbit, and composer Nick Ryan, and performances from Peter Gregson, Tim Exile, and Imogen Heap. In addition, TED talk videos from David Byrne, Itay Talgam, Evelyn Glennie, and Benjamin Zander.[1]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.soundonsound.com/news?NewsID=13350%7CMartin Russ, "TEDx Aldeburgh Music - a success!," Sound On Sound Magazine, Nov 2010
[edit] External links
- Aldeburgh Music
- ITV Local Anglia's entertainment show All Angles on Aldeburgh Festival June 2008
- TEDx Aldeburgh Website
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