day one.two

staging is coming in after successful get in to the cathedral last night, and the wine tents are going up on the South West lawn. For the first time, Worth Brothers, wine merchants who run their business from amazing and ancient cellars just outside the Cathedral Close, will be running the Wine Tents after nearly three decades of dedicated, behind-the-scenes work from the Lichfield Festival Association Wine Committee. Even if people are not going to come to a concert, I would strongly recommend swinging by any evening from 6.30pm for some excellent wine (and food provided by nearby Doveston's). If you happened to swing by between 7.30 and 9.30 on Wednesday 15 July, they'll be doing summer wine tastings for £5 a head.

bafa at lfa

tonight is the annual dinner of the Lichfield Festival Association, and the guest speaker will be Stewart Collins, current Chairman of the British Arts Festivals Association, and Artistic Director of Henley Festival, artsfestival:chelsea and Holder's Season in Barbados.
Stewart visits Lichfield to talk about the vital importance, the extraordinary diversity, and current health of British festivals. As BAFA Chairman he's best placed to know, but he's also right in the middle of BAFA's spring road shows and has been visiting Presteigne, Bath, Leeds, Edinburgh over the last fortnight with Cambridge and Canterbury next week. BAFA is also visiting Birmingham at the end of the month for a Tourism Management Institute day conference.

Those sharp eyed among you will have also realised that Stewart (wearing his Chelsea hat) and I have been working together for the last three years on the Confluences project that culminates at both our festivals this year (as well as at Salisbury's).

I have also just remembered that I heard about the sad death of Humphrey Lyttelton just as the 2008 LFA Dinner finished. Touch wood...

london debut for volodin

Alexei Volodin, the brilliant young pianist who performed at the 2007 and 2008 Lichfield Festivals, will finally have his London debut this saturday evening as part of the London Symphony Orchestra's Rachmaninoff Festival, which is part of their Emigre Series. Conducted by Valery Gergiev, Alexei will be performing Rachmaninoff's 3rd and 4th piano concerto on saturday and sunday respectively. Saturday night officially sold out several weeks ago (although there do seem to still be a handful remaining) and there are a few dotted around for the sunday evening. For Rachmaninoff anoraks (or should that be anoRachs), there is also a sunday afternoon concert. I predict that after hearing Alexei perform on the Saturday night, Sunday night will also sell out, despie the 4th being less popular than the 3rd.

The Lichfield Festival is taking a coach load of Lichfield Festival Association members down to support Alexei, as he's performed here for the last two years, and I'm hoping Alexei will have the opportunity to come front of house to say hi. I know he arrived into London last night, and that he's here and happy. For the record we still one or two available tickets if there are any LFA members out there who think they might like to go afterall.

As mentioned previously, Gergiev's own links to the Lichfield Festival go back to 1985, just before his London debut.