Ryedale Festival reveals programme for spring season of lunchtime concerts

The Festival, which was nominated for a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, will bring together star personalities from the world of classical music and all-age community groups and showcase rising young talent.

A short and inspiring season of spring events will give a taste of what the summer festival is known and loved for.

This year’s summer festival will take place between Friday July 14 and Sunday July 30.

Artists in residence include Anna Lapwood, who gives two vibrantly programmed recitals, conducts her choir, and invites all to join her in open-access ome and Sing and Discover the Organ events.

Also in residence is BBC Music Magazine’s Personality of the Year Nicky Spence, the Korean superstar violinist Bomsori Kim, and pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen who recently won The Times Classical Breakthrough Artist Award.

The King’s Singers and top actors lead celebrations of the 400th anniversaries of William Byrd and the First Folio of Shakespeare, while Boris Giltburg is among performers marking Rachmaninov’s 150th birthday, and the creative and compelling Dudok Quartet presents a complete cycle of Tchaikovsky’s string quartets, as well as bringing audiences their irresistible arrangements of jazz and folk legends.

As a prelude to the spring season a new Community song cycle entitled Give to Me the Life I Love will celebrate life’s adventure and the power of imagination on Saturday April 29.

Star tenor Nicky Spence and an all-age cast will gather in St Peter’s Church, Norton, for the world premiere of a Community Song Cycle inspired by the Songs of Travel by Vaughan Williams and Robert Louis Stevenson.

With new music by Bernard Hughes and words co-created by participants with Hazel Gould, the event is presented in collaboration with Richard Shephard Music Foundation.

Between Tuesday May 2 and Friday May 5, Ryedale Festival will welcome an outstanding group of BBC New Generation Artists to Ryedale for a week of lunchtime concerts recorded for broadcast on Radio 3.

Countertenor Hugh Cutting will join Christopher Glynn for a programme of songs and piano pieces on the theme of liberation, conceived during the pandemic and inspired by Michael A Singer’s best-selling book The Untethered Soul.

Scottish accordionist and Ryedale Festival Young Artist Ryan Corbett will play a typically imaginative and wide-ranging programme, and cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia will bring virtuosity and poetry together along with pianist Naoko Sonoda.

Finally, the Mithras Trio will round off the week of lunchtime concerts with their ‘exquisite phrasing’, ‘full-blooded commitment’ and ‘bold, passionate colours.’ Come along to discover some of the fastest-rising talents in classical music.

Tickets and more information can be found at https://ryedalefestival.com/

Lunchtime concerts programme is as follows:

Give to Me the Life I Love

St Peter’s Church, Norton, Saturday April 29 at 5pm

Hugh Cutting countertenor and Christopher Glynn piano

Church of St Peter and St Paul, Pickering, Tuesday May 2 at 1pm

Ryan Corbett accordion

All Saints’ Church, Hovingham, Wednesday May 3 at 1pm

Santiago Cañón-Valencia, cello, and Naoko Sonoda, piano

Church of St Peter and St Paul, Pickering, Thursday May 4 at 1pm

Mithras Trio

Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, Heslington, York, Friday May 5 at 1pm

Every year, the Ryedale Festival welcomes outstanding performers from all over the world to perform a wide-ranging and distinctive programme in the many spectacular venues in and around Ryedale, North Yorkshire – an area full of history and natural beauty.

The festival enjoys a large, loyal and enthusiastic audience, the warm support of the local community and a reputation as one of the most exciting and enterprising summer festivals in Europe. 

Events range far and wide across the area and performances are given in a range of stunning venues, including Hovingham Hall, Duncombe Park, Birdsall House, Ampleforth Abbey, Scarborough Spa and many gorgeous churches across Ryedale.

The market towns and villages of the region – principally Malton, Helmsley, Hovingham, Kirbymoorside and Pickering – have a special charm and seem not much changed for decades.

Beautiful medieval churches, major stately homes and heritage spaces abound. The surrounding countryside encompasses the North York Moors and magisterial Howardian Hills, as well as vast rolling landscapes and wooded valleys through which the River Rye flows. 

The breadth and depth of the festival’s impact is reflected at the box office, where it has achieved record-breaking ticket sales for ten years in succession.

A recent five-star review by Richard Morrison in The Times recognised the remarkable growth and ambition of the festival, praising ‘the visionary direction of Christopher Glynn, a distinguished piano accompanist who has turned into an inspired programmer and a canny spotter of rising young talent.’

The Festival began in 1981 when four musician friends, Geoffrey and June Emerson, and Peter and Alex White, had the idea of launching a small series of local concerts.

The first Helmsley Festival brought together more friends and other professional musicians and made an immediate impact on the town and its surroundings.

So popular did it become that after five Festivals a broader base was called for, and the Ryedale District Council stepped in with the generous support, enabling it to grow. Before long, events ranged far and wide in the area to make a true Ryedale Festival. 

Among many exciting and ambitious plans for the future, the festival recently created an online platform called RyeStream to share performances with music lovers.

Tickets for the spring and summer festivals are available at:

Online: ryedalefestival.com

Phone: 01751 475777

In person: Ryedale Festival Box Office, Memorial Hall, Potter Hill, Pickering. The box office opening hours are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday from 9.30am to 2.30pm.