Two Moors Festival announces October 2024 programme

The Two Moors Festival has revealed the programme for its 2024 edition. Running from 3 to 6 October in Dartmoor and 10 to 13 October in Exmoor, the theme of this year’s programme is the ‘daily 24-hour cycle’ of light and darkness.

Kicking off at St Mary’s Church, Lynton with a concert from Roderick Williams and Christopher Glynn pairing Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel with a new commission by Freya Waley-Cohen, the festival’s Exmoor leg will also include performances from Connaught Brass and the Carducci Quartet before artistic director Tamsin Waley-Cohen takes to the stage alongside harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani with a concert including Handel, Bach and Mozart.

Talking about her approach to this year’s programme, Tamsin Waley-Cohen said: ‘I’ve chosen to explore this year’s theme from different perspectives, from the 24 hours of the day and the 24 keys of western music, to magic and dreamscapes, the bright sunlight of the baroque to the reflected moonlight of romanticism, and our connection to the Earth’s daily turn on its axis. This promises to be a Festival full of evocative experiences and storytelling from both internationally established and exciting up-and-coming artists.’

On Dartmoor, the festival brings guests Stile Antico to perform Early English Music including Byrd, Tallis and Monteverdi in Okehampton’s All Saints Church. Tamsin Waley-Cohen teams up with the Palisander Recorder Quartet for an evening of Paginini, Tartini, Biber and Bach before winners of the festival’s Young Musicians’ Competition present a triumphant winners’ concert. The festival will close on 13 October with Equinox, an ‘exploration of time, space, identity, memory and loss’ created by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder and violinist Henning Kraggerud, who performs the piece with pianist Clare Hammond.

Tickets for the 2024 festival are available to the general public from 1 July.