If you didn’t know about the Chelsea Festival before, there should be few excuses after the coming year’s events due to kick off on Saturday 14th June.
The 2008 Festival’s dramatic curtain raiser is the first of two performances of Pink Floyd’s rock suite, ‘Atom Heart Mother’ – Pink Floyd’s first UK number one. An evening created specially for the Chelsea Festival by Atom Heart Mother’s co-composer, Ron Geesin the two performances will feature a substantial cast including rock band, choir and brass ensemble. Tickets are expected to go very fast.
The Atom Heart Mother performances will take place at Chelsea Festival’s largest, prestige venue, Cadogan Hall and the award winning hall will also provide the venue for Festival appearances by leading American operatic soprano Barbara Bonney, in a welcome return to the London concert scene; the much admired star continuing in the ascendant, violinist Nicola Benedetti; and another London first, Amsterdam’s much feted Nieuw Ensemble, in a programme that showcases music from the middle east as part of the Al Farabi concert series, featuring Lebanese diva Hiba Al Kawas. The award winning Cadogan Hall is also the venue for an appearance by the extraordinarily charismatic Guinean kora (African harp) player N’Faly Kouyatй and his band Dunyakan. A truly great evening of authentic African rhythms.
Choral events include an exclusive London concert by the Estonian Orthodox Choir, whilst the Festival will also see the third part of its hugely successful co-commission programme, ‘Confluences’. This year, acclaimed novelist Vikram Seth turns to the subject of ‘The Ages of Man’ for his latest work ‘The Traveller’. Also featuring Gerald Finzi’s ‘Dies Natalis’, the forces for this concert include tenor Mark Padmore, the Britten Sinfonia, adult and children’s choirs and the violionist Philippe Honorй.
As Richard Morrison in The Times commented: “[The partnership] between the writer Vikram Seth and composer Alec Roth is turning into the Rolls and Royce of the arts world”. ‘The Traveller’ will premiere in Holy Trinity Church Sloane Street, one of a number of historic Festival venues that also includes Christopher Wren’s Royal Hospital. The Royal Hospital hosts five Festival events: chamber events in the elegant State Apartments and in the chapel ‘The Glory of Venice’, music by Monteverdi and Gabrielli performed by the Cornett and Sackbutt Ensemble of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Elsewhere the Chelsea Festival features the exceptional range of performances for which it has earned its recent reputation, including comedy from Sandi Toksvig, Josie Long and Miles Jupp; talks from Simon Hoggart and Humphrey Burton; chamber music from the stable of young artists that have enjoyed the Festival’s long term support; plus an extensive family and children’s programme together with four days of street theatre and music in Duke of York Square, featuring groups as varied as The Swinging Chandeliers, singing nun Musical Ruth and the slightly discouragingly named Wet Picnic!
Talking about the Festival on the occasion of the programme launch, Festival Director Stewart Collins commented: “A great Festival should always be a series of wonderful performances that taken together are far greater than the sum of the individual parts. With so much that is new and with events taking place in so many different places throughout Chelsea, I hope it goes without saying that the Chelsea Festival is continuing to become just that – a great Festival".
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