mr simcock again

seems Gwilym Simcock (performing as part of Acoustic Triangle on 10 July) has been nominated for both Best Instrumentalist and Best Album in the 2008 BBC Jazz Awards to be announced on 21 July. The late Humphrey Lyttelton (Humph Remembered on 11 July) has received a posthumous nomination for the Radio 2 Jazz Artist of the Year.

visa trouble

news just in - it seems that only 15 of the 16 musicians involved in the Russian Chamber Philharmonic St Petersburg performance on 4 July received their UK visas a fortnight ago, with their principal cellist still waiting. trying to discuss this with the British Consulate in Düsseldorf is difficult because they have outsourced all their visa applications. seems that an expensive phone call within Germany or an email are my two options for trying to find out what is going on. just fired off an email in the hope of a relatively quick response.

volunteer shirts have arrived

new festival shirts for our volunteers have arrived, replacing last year's black version.

since the 2005 Festival we've vastly grown our volunteer base. over the next two weeks nearly 200 people, over 25% of whom are under 25 will be working behind the scenes to make everything run smoothly, providing crucial support. these shirts subtly increase our exposure throughout the city, and help identify who is involved. the happy model is Richard, our volunteer co-ordinator...
Interested in volunteering? More information here.

three days

three full days to go before everything starts up, and out my window I can see the marquees going up on the cathedral lawns. By this time in previous years, we would also have started bringing sound, lights, staging and visual arts into the cathedral, but for the first year we only have access from after evensong tomorrow evening. It will be tight to get everything ready in time for Thursday morning, but it should all happen to plan...

matthew mcdonald

this has nothing to do with the imminent festival, but I just found out that a friend of mine, the double bass player Matthew McDonald, has been appointed Principal Bass of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra replacing the astounding Klaus Stoll who is retiring after 43 years in the job. Matt becomes the first Australian to win a principal position in this orchestra.

pick of the week

the saturday before the festival starts is the first opportunity to see how we fare in the listings in the national press. Considering we only have a handful of events before there's another saturday, I think we've done OK. Aside from making the general listings in the guardian guide, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra's 5 July concert is 'Pick of the week'. In the Information (Independent), we pretty much survived the general classical listing cull, but the calibre of the Festival talks ensured a listing in the 'Five best talk & festivals' with Martin Bell, Roy Strong, Anna Pavord, and Marin Alsop's interview being picked out as highlights.
i'm in the office for a few hours updating schedules having already spend a few hours at another choir rehearsal...

listening 0608

i get sent cds constantly from artists either hoping for a performance at the Lichfield Festival or at Abbotsholme Arts Society or from artists that I'm interested in hearing a little more about. Inundated would be one appropriate word to use. I would like to think that eventually everything gets listened to, but I am quite behind, not helped by the fact that the cd player in my room has been broken for months, and I can listen only at home or in the car on the way home.
If you are reading this hoping for a sniff at what my future programming might include, this is unlikely to provide much insight. I listen to far more than I could ever book, and enjoy many things that may not be appropriate for the audiences I programme for.
Recent things I have enjoyed listening to include:

• the smith quartet - philip glass complete string quartets - signum classics - SIGD117
• spiers&boden - vagabond
  
• haydn trio eisenstadt - scottish songs - brilliant classics - 92278
• la serenissima - the golden age - AVIE - AV2154

of course, this last cd (volume three of three), which I found in my in tray earlier this week, is the programme La Serenissima will be performing when they visit Lichfield on 9 July. This is brilliantly performed stuff (I seem to concur with the only review I could find online here) and I know from experience is much, much better live...

cultural olympiad launch meeting

a little bizarre to start my morning travelling to the heart of Stafford for a meeting with Paul Kaynes, the West Midlands Creative Programmer for the 2012 Olympics, when we live five minutes from each other in birmingham. great to have the chance to see him though and talk briefly through ideas for the next four years. Stafford is the first of five cities Paul is visiting over the next month to knock the Cultural Olympiad Launch Weekend offering from the West Midlands into shape (more information here). The Cultural Olympiad Launch from 26-28 September happily coincides with the third lichfield literature weekend, so we are part of Staffordshire's contribution to kick starting the run up to the 2012 London Games. With the two themes of Open Up and Light Up coming down from LOCOG, the former is the one we are likely to be working best with. Currently thinking along 'open a book - open your mind' lines.

shiraz project

this afternoon we finish up the second round of schools workshops and tomorrow we start with the third visit in the lead up to a performance in front of peers on 7 July. the project is jointly devised by Sarvar Sabri, the composer of the Festival commission for the full film, and Miguel Mera, the brilliant London-based film composer who devised our Silent Film Project based on Charlie Chaplin shorts in 2006 (alongside the most excellent Rainmaker Vision Factory from Wolverhampton).
This year students from four schools will compose and perform a score for excerpts from the 1928 silent Indian film, Shiraz (receiving its world premiere with a Sabri score on 10 July), while learning about musical structures and genre and also about the structure of film and the way different cultures are represented.
The project received generous support from the Clore Duffield Foundation.

Chanced across this pic in the office - it's Carl Peberdy teaching sitar from one of the initial workshops.

chorus rehearsal

tonight was one of the last rehearsals for the inaugural Lichfield Festival Chorus' performance of The Traveller on 8 July. Only two more rehearsals left before we sing in front of Alec Roth, the composer, then a rehearsal with the Britten Sinfonia, then a performance recorded live by BBC Radio 3. The Festival Chorus had been talked about for years before I even started at the Festival, but for me it was key that we didn't start by doing standard repertoire. This perhaps is why we waited so long before starting a choir, and why the four-year Confluences project was the perfect outlet. We chose Jeffrey Skidmore as our first Chorus Director, mainly to strengthen the connection the Confluences project had with Ex Cathedra (who performed A New Song last year) but also because Jeffrey has lived in Lichfield for decades.
Lichfield is blessed with both wonderful choral conductors and excellent choirs, and I felt it was crucial that the Festival Chorus did repertoire that was new or unfamiliar, and was very much the cherry on top of the choirs that people sang in every week. Another key factor was to start a choir that was not based in the cathedral close, and we have achieved a fantastic choir from all corners and pockets of Lichfield District and South Staffordshire and we have yet to step foot anywhere near the cathedral (making the performance day much more powerful). There is a mix of people that sing regularly and people who have not sang for many, many years. Our ages range from 6 to over 80. A true community choir. I am still slightly alarmed that I find myself singing (having not sung properly for nearly 18 years) but the music is so addictive that I found myself singing at the back during the rehearsals I was looking after, and we needed as many men as possible...

acoustic triangle review

4 star review just in from the guardian regarding acoustic triangle's concert last week in London.

casanova

in another happy circumstance, this week's Book of the Week on Radio 4 is Ian Kelly's fascinating biographyof Casanova read by Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead up to being released at the end of this week. The world's most famous lover and libertine will have excepts from his memoirs read by actor Timothy West in Lichfield Cathedral on 6 July.
West's readings will be accompanied by harpsichordist Sophie Yates performing works by Couperin, Rameau and Handel.

weather watching

it is around this time before every festival that we start to keep one eye on the long range weather forecasts. How accurate which ever one we use purports to be is slightly irrelevant at this distance. You would think that with the majority of our events occurring inside that this would not be an important passtime, but we have found that the weather has a strong impact on last minute audiences either way. Rain discourages people from leaving their houses. Excellent weather discourages people from leaving their BBQs. Our major outdoor event, the Medieval Market, is extremely weather dependent, with stalls, activities and events scheduled throughout the day throughout the city on 5 July. Around 25,000 to 30,000 people visit Lichfield on this day, and bad weather this year will make the 2009 Georgian Market that little bit more difficult. At this distance, thunderstorms are forecast, but we've had fine weather for the last three years despite similar advance weather projections. Plan for the worst, hope for the best I guess...

mr simcock

nice piece in today's Independent about Gwilym Simcock (artist-in-residence at the 2006 Lichfield Festival). He has a new composition being performed by Acoustic Triangle (of which he is a part) and the Sacconi Strings in Lichfield Cathedral on 10 July. He is also writing a major new commission for the BBC Proms on 9 August, so keep an eye on that...

back from norfolk

Back from Norfolk where I had a meeting with artist Angie Lewin about the possibilities surrounding her exhibition at the 2009 Lichfield Festival. I've been a fan of Angie's work for years, and I'm delighted that she has accepted a long-standing invitation to exhibit in Lichfield. Such a privilege to see her studio and garden and to talk about possible commissions and exhibition spaces. Angie has just been elected to the Society of Wood Engravers and is currently working on a piece inspired by the Barbican in London (which is blogged about here). Keep an eye out for it at the imminent London Calling exhibition at St Jude's Gallery in Aylsham starting Saturday 26 June.

an astonishment of riches

here's the link to today's FT article on the Public Catalogue Foundation.

thirteen days

slightly messy day today that started out with a whole two weeks to go before the Festival starts, but has ended feeling very different. In amongst travel and accommodation plans for Alexei Volodin, technical minutae for shows and talks at the Garrick, working out who will actually sing what in the inaugural Lichfield Festival Chorus, and writing and proofing copy for the festival programme, I've been working on september literature, budgets for a wonderful december event and trying to strengthen plans for July 2009 in readiness for meetings with board members next week. somehow over the next fortnight I also need to finalise the 0809 abbotsholme arts society season, and get it designed, printed and distributed. feels a little like a thirteen day mountain right now.

Nice phone call though from Malcom Creese from Acoustic Triangle (Lichfield Cathedral 10 July) who launched their new 3 Dimensions cd at the Spitalfields Festival on Monday night. No doubt reviews of both cd and concert will start to filter through. Here in Lichfield we will be presenting this in the round in the cathedral nave, which certainly isn't rocket science but hasn't ever been tried by the festival. Audience on four sides with musicians in, around, above... will be rather magical i think.

seth to attend the traveller

Good news for the performance of The Traveller on 8 July. Vikram Seth has managed to alter his travel plans and will be flying in from Italy for both the pre-concert talk and the performance. Vikram's six new poems and translations of over 20 Indian texts from languages including Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and Tamil, have been set to stunningly beautiful music by Alec Roth. It also seems that BBC Radio 3 will be recording the evening for delayed broadcast which is a hat-trick for Lichfield, although I have yet to be contacted directly by Auntie.

Last night was the second performance The Traveller, taking place at the Chelsea Festival. By all accounts it went really, really well. This is also an opportunity to draw attention to a few things from the world premiere performance at Salisbury Festival at the end of last month

• the review in The Times on 2 June
• a video interview with Vikram Seth taking about his writing
• opening night video interviews with Chelsea Festival Director Stewart Collins and me

The other good news is that the first year of this four-year Confluences project, Songs in Time of War, has been recorded and is due for release on 30 June by Signum Records (SIGCD124).

shiraz line up

Just had a brief production meeting with Sabri regarding his Shiraz commission for the 1928 Franz Osten film being screened on 10 July. Rehearsals are up and running (which is great news), and things are going to plan. The lineup of musicians from the Sabri Ensemble has also been released and is very exciting: Sarvar Sabri tabla/percussion Kamal Sabri sarangi/vocals Sanchita Pal vocals Carl Peberdy sitar Dan Nichols piano Ryan Trebilcock bass Hannah Marsden viola Lluis Mather flute/sax Manveer Wahiwala percussion/vocals.

supporting cyndi lauper

just noticed that the Puppini Sisters will be coming to Lichfield on 4 July fresh from performing in Arizona and California as guests of Cyndi Lauper on her True Colors Tour. How cool is that...

pcf & uogb

Andrew Ellis, the Director of the Public Catalogue Foundation who will be speaking on the country's hidden publicly-owned art on 8 July, mentioned yesterday that there will be a biggish piece on the PCF on this Saturday's Financial Times. It also seems that the latest PCF publication is Birmingham which is either an incredible coincidence or remarkably good, if slightly passive, planning on my part.

Also, on the radio this morning, I heard that Phill Jupitus will be doing a large feature on the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. The Ukes still hold the record for fastest-selling show from their 2006 Festival visit, and their performance in Lichfield Cathedral on 5 July is nearly at the 'returns only' stage. Keep an ear out on Radio 4 next Tuesday.

billboards have gone up

Spotted that at least one of the billboards planned for this year has already gone up on the Birmingham Road roundabout. Long gone are the days where Lichfield Festival banners hung from buildings throughout the city, and with the lampposts owned variously by three different authorities and only able to manage the weight of a handkerchief, the Festival has chosen to invest in this kind of profile for the last two years. With over 400 artists visiting from at least seven countries in addition to the UK, the copy line is nicely accurate too.

just over two weeks left

with just over two and a half weeks to go until the festival kicks off, and with the stark reality of everything becoming increasingly apparent, the second of our education projects in schools is up and running since first being discussed over a year ago.
Today was the first day of Choices, a project run in partnership with Apples & Snakes. Contemporary poets Polarbear and John Berkavitch have spent all of today at Nether Stowe High School with three more schools to go before the week is out. One more visit to each school in a few weeks time, then everybody gets up on stage to show what they've been up to on 4 July.
Polarbear returns later in the festival for his upgraded show if i cover my nose you can't see me. It was stunning when I saw it in development at the Birmingham REP last year. Should be even more incredible now.

coming soon

In the run up to the 2008 Lichfield Festival I will be sharing occasional thoughts and behind-the-scenes musings from the Festival office and hopefully provide some insight into this year's events...