Get exploring - City of London Festival

The City of London Festival opened this week, and for another year (until 10 July 2015) the City explodes with a whole variety of events. Not just concerts, there are over 100 free events ranging from music, circus, dance, street theatre, talks to tours and more. Free lunchtime concerts provide a chance to hear young and up-and-coming artists. And the series of debates, Justice, Money, Power will focus on the financial, political and ethical implications of life in the City with subjects including 'Do judges have too much power?' in the Judges’ Room at the Old Bailey. 

The festival is also a chance to explore the City, not only the free events at The Gherkin, Canary Wharf, Broadgate, Grange Hotel - St Paul’s, Devonshire Square, New Street Square and The Royal Exchange, but concerts in St Paul's Cathedral and many of the Wren churches, plus a chance to explore the City's great halls not normally open to the public including the Merchant Taylor's Hall, Plaisterers Hall, Goldsmith's Hall and of course the Mansion House.

There will be orchestra concerts at St. Paul's Cathedral, with the Edward Gardiner conducts Sarah Tynan, Robert Murray and Neal Davies with the London Symphony Orchestra in Haydn's Creation and Robert Howarth directs the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Monteverdi's Vespers, plus more intimate recitals such as the Danish String Quartet at Plaisterers’ Hall, Ian Bostridge and Sebastian Wybrew in the Mansion House and the New Zealand String Quartet in Goldsmiths’ Hall. There will be a Wren Marathon on Saturday 27 June, celebrating choral music in the City's Wren churches with 17 different choral performances in all.

World Premières include a work for chorus and ensemble by Thea Musgrave, Voices of Our Ancestors, performed by by the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge in St Bride’s, Fleet Street and the National Youth Chamber Choir of Great Britain and National Youth Jazz Orchestra performing together for the first time, with works including a world premiere of festival commission Journey’s End, by Pete Churchill.

The festival runs until July 10; full information from the City of London Festival's website.