Norfolk & Norwich Festival returns in May for 250th anniversary
Florence Lockheart
Monday, April 25, 2022
The 2022 Festival runs from 13 - 29 May and will feature premieres of new work as well as 18 new commissions.
Norfolk & Norwich Festival will return next month for its 250th anniversary edition, taking over traditional and unexpected venues across the English country of Norfolk and throughout the city of Norwich. This year’s music programme revisits past festival premieres as well as 18 new commissions.
Tracing its roots back to 1772, the triennial festival began as a fundraiser for the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital and is considered to be the oldest single-city arts festival in the UK. The 2022 festival’s opening weekend will feature nine newly-commissioned fanfares by young composers performed across Norwich city centre by musicians from the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. You can find a full list of the composers behind these pieces here.
Daniel Brine, Festival Director said: ‘We’re looking forward to a wonderful Festival. One which will celebrate our history, our philanthropic origins, our rich music commissioning heritage, but this milestone is also about looking to the future.’
The 2022 festival also references the festival’s original fundraising purpose in a programme celebrating 19th century opera singer Jenny Lind. Created and performed by pianist and conductor Simon Crawford-Phillips with violist and violinist, Lawrence Power, Fairytales & Nightingales aims to raise funds for the Jenny Lind Children’s Hospital.
Other UK premieres at this year’s festival include Let the Soil Play its Simple Part, a new work from Sō Percussion and Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Caroline Shaw and Gone and New Work by composer and multi-instrumentalist Angelica Negron, premiered in the same concert.
Two new works by young UK-based composers, Sylvia Lim and Joanna Ward, will be premiered by Exaudi vocal ensemble, which will also perform the madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo which inspired the new commissions. The world premiere of Time and Tide, a new work by Pete Letanka will mark the culmination of the festival’s music trail across Norfolk, featuring local young musicians alongside players of Britten Sinfonia.
BBC New Generation artists Helen Charlston and Toby Carr will perform Battle Cry, a new song cycle by Owain Park and Georgia Way, in a concert recorded by the BBC for future broadcast and Sean Shibe will present his own arrangement of Julia Wolfe’s LAD.
On 29 May the Britten Sinfonia (pictured) and Norwich Philharmonic Chorus will come together to close the anniversary festival with a programme celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The composer’s legacy will be celebrated in a performance of Five Tudor Portraits, a work originally commissioned by the Festival and premiered in St Andrew’s Hall in 1936.
You can find out more about the Norfolk & Norwich Festival here.