Chelsea Festival

Last night was the Launch party for the 2005 Chelsea Festival, the second festival to be programmed by Stewart Collins. With the piano as a rough theme and Joanna MacGregor as a featured artist (she's doing 4 concerts), Collins has put together an attractively eclectic mix which includes the Monks from Tashi Llunpo Monastery in Tibet, a millinery show from Kensington and Chelsea College, sacred music by Handel performed in the Royal Hospital Chapel and Catherine Bott singing a programme of songs themed around Emma Hamilton.

The Chelsea Festival's charm is the way it comes over as a sort of grand village fete, albeit a fete which can hire the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The festival uses venues all over Chelsea but this year they are making good use of the new Cadogan Hall; a concert hall created by Cadogan Estates out of the old Christian Scientist Church in Sloane Square.

One of the singers in my own choir, FifteenB, sang in Cadogan Hall last year at a festival event and was very enthusiastic about its acoustic. We've performed in 3 festivals so far (2000, 2002 and 2004) so I feel that we have a strong connection with the festival.