Harrogate International Festivals

 

Harrogate International Festivals kick off their summer festival with Artist in Residence Armonico Consort, and the festival reaches it's climax with a rare and intimate recital by international operatic icon Sir Bryn Terfel.

 

The Young Musicians Series and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists place the next Generation of musicians into the spotlight and the Family Concert with the Harrogate Symphony Orchestra will excite and inspire the next Generation of music audiences. Festival favourites The John Wilson Orchestra swing back into town with A Celebration of Rodgers & Hammerstein and theatre troupe Oddsocks cross the Generational gap with their unique and modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.

 

For jazz lovers, they have the young and energetic Alex Mendham & His Orchestra and Grammy-Award winning saxophonist Tim Garland. For lovers of classical chamber music, The Gould Piano Trio and Kamus String Quartet honour past generations and introduce us to an exciting new Generation of composers. And for those looking for something a little bit different, poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan presents a lunchtime concert featuring songs based on his funny, poignant and witty Early Stroll Tweets.

 

Join Harrogate International Festivals this July for their marvellous music line-up. To book tickets and find out more, visit http://bit.ly/2n4zvwg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ripon Cathedral Concert Society

The Ripon Cathedral Concert Society is a great supporter of our Festival Young Musicians, giving each finalist a family ticket for one of their Winter concerts, so we are happy to publish the following message from them in our blog:

Dear Concert Goer

The Anna Tsybuleva concert was a great way to end the winter series. But it is not quite over….... As part of the Concert Society’s support for young musicians, we are sponsoring two of the three spring concerts being given by the Vacation Chamber Orchestra (VaCO) which will be enjoyable and fun. VaCO is a residential course for seriously good young musicians and includes concerts in three locations as follows: 

Vacation Chamber Orchestra’s Spring concerts

• Thursday 6th April 7.30 at St Johns Church Sharow, HG4 5BT 
• Friday 7th April 7.30 at St Peter & St Paul Church, Stokesley TS9 5AD 
• Saturday 8th April at 7.30 at St Andrew’s Church, Aysgarth DL8 3SR 

They will play two works for mixed ensemble and narrator by Richard Shepherd, the world premier of The Selfish Dragon and The Musicians of Bremen. The concert will also include chamber music for wind quintet, string quartet and works for mixed chamber ensemble for wind and strings. Tickets costing £10 (free for those under 18) can be obtained from Jackie Bailey on 07974 142484 or at the door.  

Summer drinks and concert on Monday 3 July - a date for your diary -  

We hope you will be able to join us on Monday 3 July at 7.00 in St John’s Church, Sharow when we will be launching our exciting 2017/18 Winter Concert Series. The evening will include drinks and canapés and a special piano recital  by the young Serbian Pianist, Nicola Avramovic. The concert will include music by Schumann, Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninov and Gershwin. He is currently in the UK on a two year scholarship at the Royal College of Music. He will be familiar to Harrogate audiences having taken part in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Masterclass at last year’s Harrogate International Festival and performed at the Wesley Chapel in October. Tickets for the reception and the concert will be £15. 

Mayor of Harrogate’s Magical Spring Ball

As many of you know, the Catherdal Concert Society will be one of five charities to benefit from the Mayor of Harrogate’s Magical Spring Ball taking place on 8 April at the Old Swan Hotel. A series of very generous donations have been made to the Live and Silent Auctions. Details of the 11 stunning live and 51 silent auction items and how you can bid are available on the following web site http://www.jumblebee.co.uk/themayorofharrogatesspringball, where you can place bids for items in the Silent Auction up until midnight on 8 April . If you are not coming to the Ball, you can also make bids for live auction items by e-mailing Shirley McConville -  PA@mountstjohn.co.uk.  

Other concerts

• Saturday 1 April at 7.30 Ripon Choral Society with works by Poulenc and Vaughan Williams in Ripon Cathedral
• Saturday April 29 at 7.30. Stephen Hough piano recital at the Wesley Chapel
• Sunday 30 April at 11.00 Alessandro Taverna piano - Royal Hall, Harrogate. Harrogate International Festival’s Sunday Series
• Saturday 6 May at 7.30 Royal Northern Sinfonia in Ripon Cathedral - Ripon International Festival
• Saturday 20 May at 7.30. St Cecilia Orchestra - works by Bach/Stokowski, Respighi, Bruch and Berstein in Ripon Cathedral

We are on Facebook now!!! fe.me@HCFMSD

The BBC Ten Pieces Project - Inspire a new piece

The Federation of Festivals has sent out the following information about the above project, but time is of the essence. Deadline 10th February.

Dear Members,

As BBC Ten Pieces moves into its third project phase, they need your help to inspire a new commission!

The open call asks for inspirational words from the young people of Britain – all you need to do in your groups, workshops, lessons, even at your festivals, is have any interested young people complete the attached literacy exercise.

You can give one worksheet to each pupil, or return one sheet with a number of responses to each question on it, if you are working in a group.

Once done, send this back to tenpieces@bbc.co.uk by February 10^th. When all the responses have been collected, the Ten Pieces composer will select words and phrases to be included in the piece, and you will receive a Ten Pieces certificate signed by the composer to celebrate your contribution to the piece!

Have fun with this, and let us know how you get on!

With warm wishes,

 

Festivals House

Ripon Cathedral Concert Society

The Cathedral Concert Society is once again generously supporting the Festival's Young Musician Competition  with an offer of free tickets for this year's finalists.

We are very happy to support their excellent programme, which, on Monday 13th February features the Magnard Wind Ensemble.

The Ensemble will exploit the space and rich acoustic of Ripon Cathedral to create a very different world with music spanning four centuries. They will play a series of solo pieces and ensembles for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn – a concert of veiled nachtmusik and invocations of Greek mythology – beware the god Pan. It brings together five young dynamic wind players to explore the range and beauty of their instruments in the setting of the Cathedral with music by Bach, Mozart, Debussy, Messiaen, Britten, Barber and Waley-Cohen.  

 

Concert Tickets

Individual tickets costing £15 (£5 for students and free for under 18s) are available from the Society's web site www.riponconcerts.co.uk, the Little Ripon Bookshop (tel 01765 606689), Harrogate Theatre either on line at www.harrogatetheatre.co.uk or from their box office (01423 502116). Tickets will also be available at the door on the evening of the concert 

 

Pre-concert dinner

Once again, the Old Deanery Hotel will be serving a special two course dinner at 6pm for concert goers - braised chicken, sauté of salami, new potatoes, shallot and spinach followed by rhubarb pavlov

 + tea/coffee - costing £12 per head. If you wish to make a reservation, please contact the hotel by telephoning 01765 600 003.

 

Other events coming up

TOMORROW!! 4 Feb 7.30 pm:  Paulinus Singers - Eternal Voices and supper - St Johns Church, Sharow

6 Feb 1.00 pm:  Arturas Chamber Ensemble from Orchestra of Opera North - Wesley Chapel, Harrogate

17 Feb 7.30 pm:  Leeds International Piano Competition - Paul Lewis (piano) - Leeds Town Hall

18 Feb 7.30 pm:  Leeds Leider - Ian Bostridge (baritone) & Joseph Middleton - Schubert Winterreise - Leeds College of Music, Quarry Hill, Leeds LS2 7PD

19 Feb 11.00 am:  Harrogate International Festival - Julian Bliss (clarinet) & Robert Bottriell (piano) - Old Swan Hotel

4 Mar 7.30 pm  St Cecilia Orchestra Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Sibelius and Haydn - Holy Trinity Church, Ripon

6 Mar 1.00 pm:  Roderick Williams (baritone) and Iain Burnside Schubert Die Schone Mullerin - Wesley Chapel, Harrogate

12 Mar 11.00 am:    Harrogate International Festival - Heath String Quartet - Old Swan Hotel

 

You can access these concerts by going to the Society's website, www.riponconcerts.co.uk Click on the particular concert you are interested in, and this will take you to the place where you can obtain full detail and tickets. 

 

Don't forget that The Competitive Festival kicks off this year on Friday 3rd March at Harrogate High School in their splendid new facilities. The Programme is now with the printers! Check out our website for further details at www.hcfmsd.co.uk and follow us on Twitter at #HCFMSD

We hope to see you there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 2017 Programme is at the printers

The Programme is being printed and should be available for purchase from around 12th February from

  Music House, 18 Cheltenham Parade, Harrogate HG1 1DB.


Alternatively you could send a B5 or A4 Stamped and Self Addressed Envelope along with a cheque for £2 (made payable to HCFMSD) to Linda Wilson.  See comments on postage at bottom of this entry.
 
Linda's contact details are:
  Linda Wilson
  2 Walton Gardens,
  Thorp Arch,
  Wetherby LS23 7FU

  e-mail lindawilson36@aol.com
  Tel: 01937 842955
  Mob: 0752 293 8878.

All correspondents who entered performers have been sent their personal schedules.  If you have not received yours please contact the person who made your entry, or if you made the entry, then please contact me at starlingnest@gmail.com

Good luck to all competitors

Derek

Derek Starling
HCFMSD
Voluntary Organiser

Note on POSTAGE

We don't yet have a copy of the programme, but last year's of a similar size seems to weigh slightly under 100 grams on my analogue scales.  This is a bit tricky as 100g is the cut off point for regular stamps. 

Choose your postage remembering that B5 envelopes (the smallest that will take the programme) can use regular stamps if under 100gm whereas A4 and B5 (heavier than 100g) require Large Letter Stamps.  Insufficient postage will require a minimum £1.50 fee and a trip to the sorting office.   I'd probably go safe and use Large Letter.  The Royal Mail price finder is here http://www.royalmail.com/price-finder.

DEADLINE DAY FOR ENTRIES APPROACHING

The  on-line entry closing date is 13th January 2017 and the paper entry closing date is 4th January 2017, so you need to get your skates on if you still want to enter.

The on-line entry system (together with the full Syllabus) can be accessed from our website at www.hcfmsd.co.uk and paper entries must be sent, together with a cheque for the appropriate payment to:

Mrs Linda Wilson
2 Walton Gardens
Thorp Arch
Wetherby
LS23 7FU

If you would like a hard copy Syllabus they are available in Harrogate Library.

We have had two brilliant posters designed by school pupils this year, one from Harrogate High School which will be our new venue and one from Immanuel College in Bradford. Both will be featuring in the various poster sites maintained around Harrogate by the Harrogate International Festival, towards the middle of February so keep an eye out for those.

The Festival will take place on March 3rd-5th: 10th-12th and 17th-19th. We would love to see you there.

Harrogate International Sunday Series

We are very happy here in our blog to help to publicise the Sunday Series concerts mounted by the Harrogate International Festival as we feel they are complimentary to what we do at the Competitive Festival. It is entirely possible that one of our performers may go on to appear in a future Sunday Series concert!

Now approaching its 24th year, the Harrogate International Sunday Series presents the world’s brightest talents in classical chamber music, with performances taking place on Sunday mornings during the Spring.  Set in the Victorian splendour of the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, audiences can enjoy exceptional music and beautiful surroundings here in the heart of Yorkshire.  Previous musicians at the Sunday Series have included pianist Freddy Kempf, violinist Nicola Benedetti and the award winning Brodsky Quartet.

 

In 2017 Harrogate will be joined by Festival favourites pianist Martin Roscoe & clarinettist Julian Bliss, as well as welcoming violinist Fancesca Dego & the amazing Heath Quartet to the Festival for the first time.  The series will close in April with multi-award winning pianist Alessandro Taverna who presents an all-Chopin programme.

 

Harrogate International Festivals look forward to welcoming you to the 2017 Harrogate International Sunday Series in the beautiful surroundings of the Old Swan Hotel.