Corsham Festival

This year's Corsham Festival (21st June - 28th June) again impresses with the way this small festival manages to fit in some challenging and interesting musical programmes. This year the festival includes a concert from a new Mandolin quartet.

A very enterprising programme by Radius features Birtwistle's Lied, Ian Vine's Gesso (world premiere), George Crumb's rarely performed Eleven Echoes of Autumn, Tim Benjamin's 1 act music drama The Rosenhan Experiment (world premiere) and Thomas Ades's Catch.

The Norwegian ensemble, asamisimasa, give a programme which features music by Emil Bernhardt, Michael Finissy, Trond Deinholdtsen, Chris Dench, Mattew Shlomowitz, Sven Lyder Kahrs, Joanna Baillie and James Saunders. They promise a mixture of slapstick humour, melancholic alienation, disoriented signs and funky riffs! Sounds fascinating.

Irish Pianist Mary Dullea performs in tandem with videos by Julia Bardley; she will be performing music by Stphen Montague, Rolf Hind, Pavel Szymanski, Andrew Poppy, Joe Cutler, Benedict Mason and George Crumb.

Twin cellists Pei-Jee and Pei-Sian Ng will be performing a programme of music for 2 cellos which mixes music by Jean Barriere and David Popper with contemporary pieces by Daniel Kidane and Elen Kats-Chernin. Finally the London Sinfonietta perform music by Takemitsu, Emily Hall, Britten, Birtwistle, Messiaen and Debussy - though don't be fooled this is no ordinary orchestral concert but features music for a variety of solo instruments in different combinations.

There is also a strong Jazz vein to the Festival and numerous lively events. Definitely worth making a detour for.

John La Bouchardiere's film The Full Monteverdi featuring I Fagiolini's ground breaking Monteverdi performances will also be performed.