Celebrating 50 years of performing music by living composers - the Vale of Glamorgan Festival

Ewenny Priory, one of the venues for this years
Vale of Glamorgan Festival

The Vale of Glamorgan Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary this year with concerts in and around the Vale of Glamorgan from 18 to 24 May 2019. Unusually amongst UK festivals, it devotes itself to the work of living composers and this year the festival presents music by 30 composers, including 29 world premieres.

The festival opens with a concert from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conductor Ryan Bancroft, in a programme which includes two world premieres, from festival director John Metcalf and from Mark David Boden whose 50th Anniversary Festival commission is premiered at the concert along with music by Dobrinka Tabakova, Peteris Vasks, and Graham Fitkin. Graham Fitkin popus up again at the end of the festival when the composer gives a piano recital of his own music.

Visitors to the festival include Sandbox Percussion from New York, which is not only performing at St David's Hall, Cardiff but will be popping up at a number of out-door spaces, and the Berlin-based Armida Quartet, whose concert at Ewenny Priory features music from Azerbaijan, Tatar-Russia and Bulgaria, plus the premiere of Cardiff-based composer Robert Fokkens' festival commission. In Penarth the quartet will be playing the music of Steve Reich (whose music features across the whole festival), Arvo Pärt and Peteris Vasks. The Armida Quartet will also be performing works written by participants in the week long Peter Reynolds Composers Studio, which is a residency for emerging composers at the start of their careers to enable them to hone their skills and create genuine career progression.

Full details from the festival website.