Buxton Festival Programme 2013

The new Buxton Festival Programme has just landed on my doormat. It feels a bit slimmer - thinner paper, fewer pages maybe. Certainly it has been redesigned and looks fine and dandy.

I am pleased to see that James Gilchrist is singing in Buxton again. He was wonderful as Jephta last year. He is doing a lunchtime recital on Thursday 11th July - accompanied by pianist Anna Tilbrook. James - if I may be so bold - is also singing in Benjamin Britten's Church Parables which are being sung over two nights (14/15 July) in St John's Church. Mind you I'll need to dig deep to hear all three Parables - £99. Probably a once-in-lifetime opportunity though.

As for other highlights - well most tastes are catered for. On the chamber music front the ensemble Fibonacci Sequence are playing at the Pavilion Arts Centre on four occasions - Mozart, Dvorak, Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven and Barber figuring in their programmes.

Lizzie Ball will be doing some jazz fiddle and singing - along with the James Pearson Trio. Now Lizzie looks like she's on a catwalk in the promotional picture. Some people will question the selling of music in this way - but if she looked liked she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards there'd be complaint. Anyway 19/20 July for the Great American Songbook.

On the Literary front (and tickets are a bit cheaper this year!) you can hear Melvyn Bragg, Antonia Fraser, Roy Hattersley, Julia Bradbury and, this being Britten's centenary his latest biographer Paul Kildea.

Public booking starts on April 2nd.

The full programme is here.