Audience Survey: have your say

We welcome comments and suggestions, so please keep them coming. If you’ve been to any of our 2014 events and have something to say, please use our online Audience Survey form. It’ll only take a couple of minutes of your time, and will help us make the 2015 Swaledale Festival better still.

AUDIENCE SURVEY FORM

(We also hand out a limited number of printed Audience Survey forms at most events; the questions are the same as in this online version, and the responses go into the same pot for evaluation.)

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That’s what you think! We keep hearing snippets from Malcolm Creese, our Artistic Director about probable acts for next year and if they all come to fruition it really will be the best Festival ever. Then there are things happening in the background. We thought our web-site was beginning to look a little bit dated compared with the sites some other festivals now have, and we were wondering what to do about it. Then, lo and behold, we have had a very generous offer to design us a new site as part of a sponsorship deal – so have a look towards the end of the year and see if that too has come off as we hope.
And talking of sponsorship, some of those exciting plans that Malcolm has for next year will be dependent upon knowing the funds are available. If we know within the next couple of months that there are businesses and individuals who would like to sponsor a prestigious event at the Swaledale Festival, that would be really helpful. You can let us know at publicity@swalefest.org and we can if you prefer, talk to you before commit.

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Fancy some A Capella jazz? The 12-strong Oxford Gargoyles are stopping off in Richmond en route to their annual Edinburgh Fringe residency. The singers perform light-hearted standards, and will be at St Mary’s Church at 7:30 on Friday the 8th of August. Tickets are £10 online, or at Castle Hill Books in Richmond, or you can reserve at 07754 283161.

Sounds fun!

Re:Cycling

At the moment – and probably for a long time to come – the word ‘Yorkshire’ immediately brings up the word association ‘cycling’ and we at the Swaledale Festival have made our own contribution to the county’s Tour de France fever.
We could have put on a concert, but everyone was too busy watching the race itself and in any case, a concert would only have been a significant memory for those who were there. Instead we decided to commission a commemorative sculpture to recognise the day the Tour de France came to Reeth, and numerous other towns and villages in which the Festival has venues. Unfortunately we couldn’t put something in them all so the obvious place was at Hudson House in Reeth where the Festival has its office. Local sculptor in recycled metal, Michael Kusz, in a project involving children from local schools to help with the design ideas and collect old bike parts, produced this sculpture made entirely of recycled bicycle parts.
It’s amazing to see and hear the reactions of those who see it. The most common word is ‘Wow!’. Then they look closer and see the cogs and chain rings, the spanners, the wheel rims, seat-posts and handlebar and fork sets.
We hope that this sculpture will remain in the Community garden at Hudson House for many years to come and people will continue to say ‘Wow!’. In years to come when the Tour de France in Swaledale is but a distant memory and youngsters don’t believe the stories told by their grandparents about the day the world was watching us, there will be something to prove that it really did happen.

Ryedale Festival, July

Different month, different dale, different festival. But if you enjoyed our 2014 Festival, you’ll probably enjoy the Ryedale Festival, which runs from this Friday to 27 July. See the website at ryedalefestival.com.

We particularly like the look of Monteverdi’s Vespers, which opens the Festival. And there are a number of Swaledale favourites, whom you might like to hear again: Nicholas Daniel, whose dress-down recital with the Britten Oboe Quartet was one of our highlights this year, Charlotte Barbour-Condini, David Gordon, Kathryn Tickell (oops, no, sold out)… And there’s much more. We hope Ryedale gets good weather and good audiences.

Making history

Our musical archive has been extended in two directions – back to 1972, and forward to 7 June 2014, just a few weeks ago, when guitarists Martin Taylor and Martin Simpson signed off the most recent Swaledale Festival. If you’re curious about what you’ve  missed, or can’t remember what you heard 20-odd years ago, click the Archive and History link on the left.

As always, if you can fill any of the gaps, we’d love to hear from you; contact publicity@swalefest.org.

Big Society Award

Look – we’re not political at all, but we are proud of the Festival’s involvement in education and social wellbeing and community engagement. So we are quietly (and non-politically) pleased that Downing Street recognised our activity in these areas with one of its ‘Big Society’ awards. The award specifically mentions two initiatives:

• The Festival’s Percussion Project, which ran last year and this with children from Gunnerside, Reeth, Arkengarthdale and Catterick Garrison. See photo above of some of the children and their adult helpers.
• The Wandering Minstrels scheme, which this year took visiting professional artists into a record 14 care homes and day centres around Richmondshire during the Festival.

Forgive us for dwelling on this – but our Festival-time concerts are so visible and so well known that we’re always glad when our behind-the-scenes activities are acknowledged. Well done to Malcolm Creese, our Artistic Director, and all involved.

 

Coffee, Cake & Music

The Festival is over but the music isn’t and we like to keep you up to date with other musical offerings in our area.

Viol player Susanna Pell (a Festival regular) is giving a very informal recital in Easby church on Sunday 15 June from 10.30am – 1.00pm. Just drop in, bring a book, read the papers, meet friends and have a cup of coffee and some home made cakes (Easby has a fearsome reputation for the quality of the home-made cakes there) all while Susanna plays some delightful C18 music.

Donations are requested rather than an admission fee and proceeds will be shared between Easby church and the National Autistic Society.

Susanna hope to do a series of these informal concerts for good causes – usually the less well-known ones – so we’ll try and let you know about them as they come up.

Coffee concert poster 150614

What was your 2014 Festival highlight?

Of course it depends on your musical taste. We have had rave reports of Brass Jaw, and The Hut People were as popular as ever again but for me it had to be Trio Apaches plus Emma Johnson playing Oliver Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time composed in 1940 and first performed in 1941 when the composer was incarcerated in Stalag-VIIIA. The ensemble available in the camp comprised four instruments – piano, violin, cello and clarinet so that was what it was composed for.

It is one of those works that one knows of but rarely hears and the Festival performance in Askrigg church was a performance to remember. Thomas Carroll’s wonderfully resonant cello and Emma Johnson’s amazing clarinet in the two movements where those two instruments have a solo line, were particularly memorable. The rest was similarly moving with the excellent programme notes providing a lucid explanation of the meaning of each movement – so important in much of Messiaen’s music with its deeply religious inspiration.

Swaledale Festival audiences are noted for their deep appreciation of the music (you rarely get coughers inflicting themselves on these audiences) and at the end of Quartet for the End of Time there was an awestruck silence lasting about 7 seconds before the rapturous applause began.  How often have I been at a concert where that magic silence, and the moment with it, has been shattered by someone starting to clap loudly as soon as the violinist had moved the bow from the strings.

The trio also gave a memorable performance of Sally Beamish’s trio transcription of Debussy’s La Mer. Amazing – probably as near the sound of a full symphony orchestra as you will get from a piano trio. The Liszt Vallee d’Obermann was also well-played but was not, for me, as memorable as the other two works.

If you’s like to tell us what was your Swaledale Festival memorable moment please feel welcome to use our blog to do so.

Didn’t they do well?

Well, actually it wasn’t us that ‘did well’. It was 100 children from Dales schools at Gunnerside, Reeth and Arkengarthdale and Catterick Garrison schools Le Cateau and Wavell that did well along with Michael Thomson and his team at Gayle Mill near Hawes, artists Margaret Murphy and Jill Eagle, music teacher Rosi Keatinge with musicians Gary Hammond and Sam Pirt, better known to Festival audiences as the Hut People, along with their musician colleagues in Forro Porro.

They did so well in the Percussion Project organised by the Festival between October last year and the concert on 6 March this year that we were nominated for the Prime Minister’s Big Society Award. (See the full description of it elsewhere on our site)
There is a very rigorous vetting procedure for these awards and the final say on who gets them rests with the PM himself. It was, coincidentally, the day that The Hut People were appearing at this year’s Festival that the news came through so we were able quickly to bring a few of the children who took part to the concert and make the big announcement then. See Big Society web page

We should also remember Paul Knowles and Margaret Murphy who spent many hours finding the funding so that this project could be delivered at no cost to the schools involved. Thanks also to NYMAZ-North Yorkshire Music Action Zone, Youth Music, the Co-operative Community Fund, the Charles and Elsie Sykes Trust and the MoD Community Covenant Scheme who actually provided the funding.

The Big Society Award has huge kudos for the Swaledale Festival. Malcolm Creese, Artistic Director said:

“Winning a Big Society Award means an enormous amount to the team at Swaledale Festival, and to all the people who made the Percussion Project such a memorable event. I am particularly thrilled for the one hundred children who took part; I can’t wait to tell them the good news.”

Well done children. You didn’t just ‘do well’, you did brilliantly.

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We’ve already had several very complimentary emails about this year’s Festival. If you’d like to let us know what you thought of it you can either email us with specific comments (including constructive criticism) or fill in our audience survey for a more general opinion. We’d love to hear from you.