Latest newsletter: The infinite shining heavens

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Dear supporters,

The infinite shining heavens

As evening falls across the UK, we’re thrilled to announce the extraordinary programme for Under the Starry Skies, the special Friday night concert during the festival inspired by the starry ceiling of St Mary’s Church, one of the most treasured buildings in Beverley and an exceptional venue for chamber music and song. Gaze upon the programme here.

On 21st April – in just under three weeks – the festival audience will be treated to a lustrous array of nocturnal music, both chamber music and song. The realm of the night, a world of sleep and of dreams, is the material of some of the greatest music ever written. The programme – one of our favourites in the whole festival – includes two of Schumann’s most beautiful songs, Mondnacht and Mein schöner Stern, Strauss’s masterpiece Die Nacht, and the tender So schlaf in Ruh by Mendelssohn.

We welcome three luminous singers to St Mary’s for the concert, baritone Johnny Herford, tenor Stuart Jackson and mezzo-soprano Bethan Langford – reminding us of the three bright stars of Orion’s Belt.

Moonlight, and the mysterious and magical sphere of night, has also inspired some remarkable instrumental music. And so our constellation of artists includes cellist Cara Berridge, violinist Fenella Humphreys and French horn player Francesca Moore-Bridger. We hear Cara perform Debussy’s Cello Sonata and Schumann’s Fantasiestücke Op 73. Francesca plays the serene Nocturno by Strauss and Fenella draws the curtain on the evening with Elgar’s great ‘song without words’ Chanson de nuit.

Voice and instrument combine to chilling effect in Strauss’s rarely performed Notturno. And, at the sight of stars in the “sacred distance” at the end of Auf dem Strom, Schubert’s song for tenor and horn, we hear sublime music from this great genius of composers with a special affinity for the night.

This is sure to be a memorable Friday night in Beverley under the gentle twinkling canopy of St Mary’s. Be guided by the stars to Beverley this Easter. And reward yourself after the concert with a pint or two in one of the many fantastic pubs of the town. Cheers!

Illuminating an age

Our celebrations of the town we are proud to call home also feature Inspired by Elwell, a concert inspired by the paintings of celebrated local artist Fred Elwell, and A musical tour of the Minster, a free event exploring one of the greatest gothic buildings in Northern Europe – in which almost all of the festival musicians are participating.

In the ravishing programme for Inspired by Elwell at the East Riding Theatre, our Artistic Director, pianist Libby Burgess, joins our festival string players to perform one of Elgar’s masterpieces of chamber music, the Piano Quintet.

Libby is joined by British mezzo-soprano, Bethan Langford, for Schumann’s cycle Frauenliebe und –leben, an exploration of love and loss in the life of a woman.  Bethan is a rising star in the song world, appearing at the Oxford Lieder Festival and Ludlow English Song Weekend. It’s pleasing to see Beverley establishing a place on the UK map of song.

Bethan is also performing in A musical tour of the Minster and, whilst we’re keeping secret the full programme for this unique event, we can tell you that Bethan will be performing Mahler’s transcendent song Urlicht in it – beside the exquisite Percy Tomb, the carvings on which trace the soul’s journey up to heaven.

Songlines

The title of this newsletter is a song from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ever popular cycle Songs of Travel which Johnny Herford is performing in Home & Away. The festival this year includes such a wealth of English song and so we are delighted to welcome English song and Vaughan Williams expert, Ceri Owen, to give the first of our two talks, Let the Florid Music Praise! A Journey Through 20th-Century British Song.

Dreaming tracks

The immortal music of J.S. Bach is being celebrated in the concerts of brand new baroque group, Contraband, throughout the festival.  We’re thrilled to reveal the complete line-up of Contraband here. Contraband is a group of exceptional baroque players hand-picked by dynamic harpsichordist Christopher Bucknall, giving their first ever performances together at the festival.

J.S. Bach had a profound influence on our cornerstone composers Brahms and Schumann. The music of Bach has also shaped the lives, craft and careers of many of the festival artists. Recent and forthcoming Bach journeys include that of outstanding young mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, who stars in our Come & Sing Vivaldi Gloria. Last month, Helen’s group Amici Voices recorded its second CD, two cantatas and a motet by Bach, and in the weeks ahead Helen performs both great Passions by Bach: the St Matthew with the choir of Merton College Oxford on 9th April; and the St John with Polyphony and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at St John’s Smith Square on 14th April.

We wish you all a peaceful and joyful journey to Beverley in a few weeks. May it be star-led.

Best wishes,

Roland & Libby

Enter the dragon

We are delighted to announce the cast for our one-off matinee performance of The Reluctant Dragon. New Paths is proud to present this charming musical entertainment for families in the East Riding Theatre on 23rd April. The sold-out show is sure to be one of the highlights of our St George’s Day celebrations – all of the tickets were snapped-up within days of it being announced.

We have assembled an outstanding group of musicians for this special event, starring tenor Robin Bailey as the dragon and baritone William Townend as St George. Our narrator is highly-esteemed young actress Rachel Barnes. Oliver Walker directs from the piano. The full cast can be viewed here.

The Reluctant Dragon is a children’s story by Kenneth Grahame (author of Wind in the Willows) set brilliantly to music by John Rutter.

Italian Hour programme announced

Ciao! New Paths is thrilled to announce the programme of its Friday evening rush hour concert, Italian Hour.  Birthplace of the Renaissance and opera, and the climax of the Grand Tour, Italy has captivated artists and musicians for centuries with its beauty and culture.  We celebrate this eternal source of inspiration in a joyous programme of music by non-Italians.

The concert opens with Bach’s sunny Italian Concerto played by harpsichordist Christopher Bucknall and closes with Stravinsky’s suave Suite Italienne played by violinist Alexandra Caldon.  Along the way we hear a performance by tenor Stuart Jackson of the epic song ‘Pace non trovo’ from Liszt’s Tre Sonetti di Petraca, and soprano Katherine Crompton sings songs from Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch

View the full programme here.

Join us for a glass of prosecco, let your imagination be captured by this alluring music and be transported to the Mediterranean.

Latest newsletter: The Four Bs

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Dear supporters,

The Four Bs

Now that the “year’s at the spring”, we’re counting down the weeks until the New Paths festival bursts forth into Beverley, bringing with it forty of the country’s leading musicians for a joyous celebration of music making. We’ve packed over thirty events into the long weekend, so, rise up and come to the East Riding of Yorkshire this Easter for one of the most exciting new festivals in the land.

The opening concert, On this Island, is a springboard into the festival and is a brilliant showcase of the garland of themes encircling the spring weekend in beautiful Beverley.

Set in front of the spectacular Great West Door of Beverley Minster, with its beautiful carvings of the four seasons, we are treated to a performance of Beethoven’s radiant and evocative Spring Sonata, by Fenella Humphreys and Libby Burgess. Recently introduced to Beverley for the first time whilst visiting the area for her City of Culture concerts, Fenella can’t wait to return for the festival. Her most recent disc – Bach to the Future 2 – was Editor’s Choice in Gramophone Magazine, and so we can’t wait to hear her either!

The astonishing programme also includes one of Brahms’s great masterpieces of chamber music, the Horn Trio in E flat, in which Libby is joined by Francesca Moore-Bridger and Jamie Campbell – who makes a very welcome return to the festival, having stunned the audience last year with his heartfelt playing of Brahms’ violin sonata in D minor. We are thrilled to be continuing our journey through the chamber music and song of Brahms, our namesake composer whose music forged “New Paths”. The following day John Slack also makes a very welcome return to the festival, to perform Brahms’ autumnal F minor clarinet sonata, as part of ‘A Retrospective’ – a journey backwards through life.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with Bach (see below), Beethoven and Brahms, is Benjamin Britten; the Fourth B. We are delighted to take St George’s Day, falling on the Sunday of the festival, as a prompt to celebrate the glorious music of this Fairest Isle, including in particular the great Britten.

Follow the Four Bs as a way, or roadmap, through the festival:

Two great song cycles by Britten bookend the festival, each stemming from a life-changing meeting for the man. We’re thrilled to welcome home Claire Booth to sing Britten’s song cycle, On this Island, in the opening concert. The cycle is a setting of texts by Auden whom Britten met whilst both men were working for the GPO Film Unit (collaborating most famously on Night Mail). Nocturne, the fourth song in the cycle, foreshadows our nocturnal concert in St Mary’s – Under the Starry Skies – the extraordinary programme for which we will be announcing on Friday.

Claire is one of a number of our homecoming artists. We’re thrilled to be welcoming back to Beverley three other wonderful musicians who grew-up here: Rachel Robson, Nick Wolmark and Ildikó Allen.

On the closing night, tenor Andrew Tortise performs the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the first songs dedicated by Britten to his beloved Peter Pears, whom Britten met shortly after Auden. Britten’s musical language is at its most consciously European in this cycle and includes one of Britten’s very greatest songs Veggio co’ bei vostri occhi un dolce lume. Like many composers and musicians, Britten loved Italy and was inspired by the country. Our rush hour concert, Italian Hour, offers a 60-minute romp through music inspired by Italy, all written by non-Italians. The programme will be announced on Monday so keep your eyes open for that news on the morrow.

A festival highlight is sure to be our free Musical Tour of the Minster. We are keeping the programme of this very special event secret for now, but we can reveal that our other festival tenor Stuart Jackson will perform Britten’s third canticle, Still Falls The Rain, again with horn player Francesca. Almost all of the festival musicians will be participating in this extraordinary event, performing in every nook and cranny of the Minster – truly a celebration of this spectacular building.

C is for … Contraband

We are honoured to be hosting the first ever performances by exceptional new baroque group Contraband, directed by harpsichordist Christopher Bucknall. The lifeblood flowing through the performances of Contraband in the festival is the awe-inspiring music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the first and the last of the Four Bs – the fount of creativity for generations of musicians and a cornerstone of the art of music.

Christopher has assembled an elite squad of barqoue musicians – some of the leading players in Europe – for a series of electrifying performances during the festival in venues throughout town.

On the first day of the festival we hear two of the great Bach solo cantatas in a late-night concert in the atmospheric chancel of Beverley Minster, in which Contraband is joined by singers Claire Booth and Johnny Herford.

On the Friday night Christopher performs Bach’s glorious Italian Concerto in Italian Hour. The café bar of the East Riding Theatre hosts a pop-up Saturday afternoon performance of Bach’s Coffee Cantata in which Katherine Crompton and Edward Grint join Contraband for this hilarious piece. In the evening, the group move to the main stage of the East Riding Theatre for Gourmet Baroque, a lavish – and at times boisterous – concert of Baroque favourites including Bach’s popular fifth Brandenburg Concerto.

Over the next few weeks we will be tracing the various Bach journeys of our artists as they sing, play and record the music of Bach throughout the world. We’re thrilled that Bach is in the DNA of our festival.

The Five Ss

The genetic material of the New Paths festival also includes its dynamic pipe organ events. The festival is inspired by the memory of Alan Spedding who was for many years the organist of Beverley Minster.

We are proud to welcome international recitalists, Christian Wilson and Andrew Dewar, plus three talented students, Asher Oliver, Benjamin Mills and Paul Greally, to the festival. The students include recipients of bursaries from the Alan Spedding Memorial Fund to attend Oundle for Organists. We will once again be supporting that memorial fund with our Come & Sing event. And Asher Oliver will be performing one of Alan’s organ works in the Musical Tour of the Minster.

Christian Wilson’s recital, Orb & Sceptre, in Beverley Minster on St George’s Day is a feast of music of the British Isles including the world premiere of a new piece co-commissioned by the festival with Sound Scotland from Alasdair Nicolson. The recital also features works by Bairstow, Mendelssohn, Purcell, Byrd and Walton.

This year we travel to Bridlington for the recital, French Connections, by Andrew Dewar – organist of the American Cathedral in Paris. An organists’ outing to the English seaside calls for the Five Ss: Sun, Sea, Sand, …. Socks and Sandals.

Let the spring tide of the North Sea pull you to the East Coast next month.

Ornithology: the time of the singing of birds is come

April 2017 is 25 years since the death of Olivier Messiaen. Andrew’s recital pays homage to this most colourful of composers in a programme of music of his circle. We mark the anniversary in a number of other concerts. Messiaen had a life-long obsession with ornithology and bird song. In Home and Away, we hear flautist Fiona Slominska play Messiaen’s Le Merle Noir, based on blackbird song. And there will be more Messiaen birdsong in the Musical Tour of the Minster, but the programme for that special event is under wraps so that is all we can say. Taking us full circle back to the opening night concert, Claire Booth sings Messiaen’s verdant Trois Mélodies.

Let us then finish with a couple of lines of poetry tying this whole thing together: “The spring is sprung, the grass is riz. I wonder where the boidie is.”

We very much look forward to welcoming you to the festival in four weeks, when the winter shall have passed and the rain shall be over and gone.

With all good wishes,

Roland and Libby

Latest newsletter: Time to book your tickets

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Roll up! Roll up! Time to book your tickets

Dear supporters,

We hope that it is not too late to wish you a very Happy New Year!

We are hugely excited to announce that tickets are now on sale for the 2017 New Paths festival in Beverley. Enjoy a leisurely Sunday browse through our website and get booking your tickets through the East Riding Theatre box office. Many of last year’s events were heavily subscribed so we recommend moving swiftly to secure your seats!

At the same time, we are thrilled to launch our official brochure for the 2017 festival. Click here to peruse the wonderful array of events that April holds in store.

If you can’t wait until then, you might be interested to know that Artistic Director Libby Burgess and fabulous violinist Fenella Humphreys – who will also feature in the festival and whose new CD is currently the BBC Music Magazine’s instrumental recording of choice – are giving two performances in Hull next week as part of the City of Culture celebrations. You can catch them at 1:15pm on Friday 3rd April or 7:30pm on Saturday 4th, both in the Middleton Hall. See here for further details.

We look forward to seeing you in April.

With warmest wishes,

Libby and Roland

Tickets are on sale!

Tickets are now on sale for the 2017 New Paths festival.

Tickets for all ticketed events (regardless of venue), and festival passes, are available from the East Riding Theatre box office:

Online: East Riding Theatre box office
By phone: 01482 874050
In person: East Riding Theatre, 10 Lord Roberts Road, Beverley, HU17 9BE
(Tues-Fri 10am–5pm, Sat 10am–12noon)

Places can be reserved for all free events, and for festival meals:

Email: admin@newpathsmusic.com
Post: 9 Highgate, Beverley, HU17 0DN

Latest newsletter: 2017 festival programme unwrapped

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Christmas gift: 2017 festival programme unwrapped

Welcome Yule!

Dear all,

It is our great pleasure to announce that the 2017 festival programme is now live on our website: please browse it here.

Whilst snoozing in your armchair after too much turkey, dreaming of your 2017 holidays, forget Benidorm or Barbados – join us in Beverley after Easter for an incredible weekend of music.

As Winter makes its journey to Spring in the New Year we will share further news of the many wonderful events in store and of the exceptional team of musicians journeying to Beverley for the festival.

Despite the geopolitical machinations of 2016, it was an extraordinary inaugural year for New Paths, thanks to your amazing support. We look forward to seeing you again in 2017.

With best wishes for a peaceful and joyful Christmas,

Libby and Roland

Latest newsletter: New Paths 2017 – diaries to the ready!

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2017 dates announced!

Dear supporters,

We hope you have enjoyed a glorious and sunny summer, whatever you have been doing, and your pencils are sharpened for the Back-To-School season.

We are delighted to announce that, following the huge success of the inaugural New Paths festival earlier this year, we will be holding another festival next year, and the dates have been fixed. New Paths 2017 will take place in Beverley from Thursday 20th April to Sunday 23rd April.

As you would expect, there will be a feast of music-making across those days, featuring some familiar musicians from this year, as well as some new faces. There will be family concerts, masterclasses, events in the community, a Come & Sing, and a whole host of chamber music, song and organ concerts, at all sorts of times of day and night!

Further details will follow in due course, with programme announcements later in the autumn. If you would like to receive a hard copy of our brochure once it is released, please join our ‘snail mail’ mailing list by emailing your postal address to info@newpathsmusic.com.

Meanwhile, you can remind yourself of the joys of this year’s festival by visiting our 2016 festival pages. We hope you’ll agree there are lots of happy memories!

For now, please do put 20th April to 23rd April 2017 in your diary. We very much hope to see you then in Beverley.

With all best wishes,

Roland and Libby

2017 festival: 20th-23rd April 2017

Following the incredible success of the inaugural New Paths festival, New Paths 2017 will take place in Beverley 20th-23rd April 2017.

Watch this space for further updates, and make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter to hear announcements as they are made.

Please put the dates in your diary and come and join us!

Latest newsletter: One month on!

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Dear New Paths supporters,

It is incredible that it is now a month since the end of the inaugural New Paths festival! We were absolutely thrilled with the level of support we received, both from those who call Beverley home and those who were visiting it for the first time. The buzz generated by our outstanding artists, the warm audiences, and such beautiful venues, provided a very special atmosphere. Thank you so much to all who were a part of it.

We are delighted to announce that, following such a successful first year, we will indeed be doing it again! Our 2017 dates will be announced shortly, so keep an eye on our website, our Twitter feed, and our Facebook page for further information.

Meanwhile, do have a look at our photo gallery from last month, read our festival write-up, or listen to Artistic Director Libby Burgess in conversation about establishing New Paths. Enjoy the memories!

Next spring may feel a long time away at the moment, but there are plenty of events coming up in Beverley, organised by other people, to keep you entertained between now and then:

Beverley & East Riding Early Music Festival
The 2016 Beverley & East Riding Early Music Festival runs Friday 27th – Monday 30th May. Opening with JS Bach’s remarkable Brandenburg Concertos presented by Florilegium and closing with Monteverdi’s monumental Vespers, guests artists include soprano Elin Manahan Thomas and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, the Cardinalls’ Musicke, and the Fitzwilliam String Quartet. Further information available here.

Come & Sing Karl Kenkins’ The Armed Man
East Riding County Choir are holding a “Come & Sing” Karl Kenkins’ “The Armed Man” in Toll Gavel Church, Beverley, on Saturday 11th June. Details and application form can be found here.

Beverley Chamber Music Festival
The 2016 Festival will begin on Wednesday 21st September and end on Saturday 24th September, featuring performances by Tasmin Little and Martin Roscoe, Alexandra Dariescu, and the Carducci String Quartet. Further information available here.

We wish these organisations all the very best with their projects, and look forward to seeing you again soon ourselves!

With all best wishes, and great thanks for your help in getting New Paths off the ground,

Roland and Libby