festivals
David Nice
It's an uncanny coincidence that two operas about pain relief which goes wrong should premiere at Irish and Scottish festivals at the same time. Today also sees Simon Thompson's review of Missy Mazzoli's The Galloping Cure, imaging the American opioid crisis, at the Edinburgh International Festival, and I'll take his word for it that Mazzoli does a better job on this subject than she did in a flat operatic adaptation of Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves at a previous EIF. Irish composer Michael Gallen's work was new to me - he's already had success with Elsewhere (2021), and The Curing Line Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
What does a spectacular backdrop give to – or maybe take from? – a music festival? Exit the Wigmore Hall and, however transcendent the performance, you find yourself gazing on a posh kitchen showroom. Nothing in the vicinity can compete with the music. Leave the Église Saint-Michel in Chamonix and the Mont Blanc range soars upwards with improbable drama, the perpetual snows of its summit girded by a squad of jagged, saw-toothed peaks.
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This (pictured above from outside the church) was the iconic vista that fired the awe of Read more ...
Camp Bestival 2026, Lulworth Castle review - where the daytime magic still outshines everything else
Katie Colombus
A few years ago, Camp Bestival felt like a charming, quietly eccentric affair, fairly small in the best sense, especially set beside the giants of the British festival calendar. Curated as ever by its founder Rob da Bank and held in the grounds of Lulworth Castle on Dorset's Jurassic Coast, it has grown into something that feels much bigger and even more beloved: a multi-award-winning family institution. But the essential character holds. This is a camping festival for extraordinary creative arts by day and a measure of hedonism by night - all done to the absolute highest standard Read more ...
Katie Colombus
You can tell what a festival believes in by where the crowds crush the hardest. At Latitude, it's in the forest for the up-and-coming acts, the Listening Post for the poetry and the Waterfront Stage for the ballet – as much as the main stages, sometimes more.On Thursday evening the Disco Shed was already spilling its glitter into the trees, and over at The Listening Post the queue for Hollie McNish had closed the tent before I could get in. My peevishness at missing it was quickly replaced with delight that a poetry reading was oversubscribed on the opening night of a festival that also Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
FRIDAY 24 JULY, by Guy OddyEven for a festival whose whole purpose is to platform a rich range of artists from cultures all around the world, WOMAD 2026 is seriously on top of its game for a new start at a new venue deep in the heart of rural Wiltshire. The 2000-acre Neston Park, created in the 1790s, proved a beautiful setting that mirrored the excellent acts and fine weather. It's certainly no Womud and sunscreen is at something of a premium during long summer days.
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Similarly, the food on offer is consistently off-the-hook and the Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Sweating in my lair, there’s no trip to the mecca this year. If the festival was on, I'd be there right now, but it’s a fallow year and Glastonbury Festival is keeping its head down. The Glastophilic chat rooms bubble with antsy longing. My house is prowled by ghosts of yesteryear. Finetime’s camera is dormant. The cows on the farm chew their cud in peace.Instead of taking it to the wire in the fields of dreams, scribbled later with the urgency of one possessed, sleepless and obsessed, I can only offer ruminations. Snapshots and snippets. Aided by a large box of mementos from the attic, I Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
The fact that what’s now known as The Paper Factory – a disused paper and cardboard manufacturing plant on the west of Edinburgh – is soon to be demolished (for flats, obviously) gave this year’s Hidden Door festival an even more spooky, ethereal feel than previously. Whilst last year’s event – the first in that venue – felt weird and exploratory, this year the death of the space was very much to the fore, with the Hidden Door team giving it a blazing requiem to see it out in style. Again, the physicality as well as the history of the venue inspired much of the programming. One of the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Nottingham is broiling. With sun heat. And with humanity. The pubs overspill beyond the pavement, into the road, as hordes of Nottingham Forest fans prepare for the final game of the season, sinking gallons of carbonated amber liquid. Unrelated, in Old Market Square a sizeable gaggle of the ill-informed and ham-faced, waving England flags, face off against a counter-demonstration, divided by ranks of fluorescent police. And every available venue is hosting Dot To Dot, a festival showcasing fresh musical talent.Begun in 2005, Dot To Dot is a multi-venue affair, like Camden Crawl or The Great Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It is almost without fail that Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival is guaranteed to be one of my annual musical highlights – and despite it still only being April, I suspect that it will be the same again this year. As is usually the case, the line-up of this celebration of the weird and distinctly wonderful was one where only the most musically literate would be aware of more than a handful of the performers. However, it was again a set-up where most would have gone home having discovered a new favourite band. This time, mine would most certainly be the raw and visceral Prostitute. That said, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Fuck Thatcher, fuck neoliberalism.” After these words from the stage, an audience response. “Fuck Thatcher” echoes the approving shout from the darkness.The performer expressing his views is the Sheffield-based folk-rooted stylist Jim Ghedi. What he’s said has not come out of the blue. There is context. He is introducing “Ah Cud Hew,” a song included on his In the Furrows of Common Place album. He learnt it from Ed Pickford, a County Durham singer and songwriter with a family background in coal mining. The song – “I could hew” – is about the decimation of the coal industry during the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The first live performance at the inaugural Riga Music Week is by Saucējas (pictured above). This seven-piece vocal ensemble is avowedly Latvian. Formed in 2003 at the Latvian Academy of Culture, their singing, though polyphonic, allows space for solo lines within the framework of the collective voice. Drones and rounds are incorporated. A kinship with runo song is clear. In traditional costume, they embody an aspect of Mother Latvia: that this country wants to celebrate its traditions, ensuring they are not lost.
Saucējas are tremendously powerful. Experiencing them at Riga Music Week’s Read more ...
Simon Thompson
My colleague Boyd Tonkin visited the Lammermuir Festival for the first time this year. His eyes and ears have been opened to its treasures, but some of us have been in on the secret for years. Importantly, that includes the East Lothian audiences, who have been attending the festival in bigger numbers than ever, ensuring that the festival has sold out almost every concert in its biggest venue, St Mary’s Church, Haddington, and packed out many other smaller ones, too. The festival’s major modus operandi is to build partnerships with artists over considerable chunks of time, so as to Read more ...