Ji Liu
‘The world comes to Beaumaris’ during the annual arts festival held in beautiful Beaumaris on the Isle of Anglesey. An outstanding array of events between Thursday 22 May and Thursday 29 May means there is an event to suit everyone.
This year the Festival includes classical music and jazz, talks, readings, a South African wine tasting, a festival lunch and an art exhibition.
Events are held at various venues, and this year tickets can be purchased directly from the website, http://beaumarisfestival.com, with no booking fees as well as through the box office.
The Festival has two fantastic opening events with an Organ Recital by Welshman James Gough in the exquisite St Mary’s parish church, 22 May, and a performance by Hogia’r Ddwylan, the delightfully entertaining male voice choir, 23 May.
The Festival’s ‘Young Artists Series’ has proved immensely successful; 2014 sees an exciting new ‘Young Pianists Series’. This is a chance to hear a range of artists before they become famous.
Past performers include internationally renowned Welsh pianist Llŷr Williams and Brit Award-winning trumpeter Alison Balsom. Following in their footsteps this year are pianists Dominic Doutney and Clare Hammond, who plays ‘Keeling, Coniunctio’ a Festival Commission, and Ji Liu, whose new album ‘Piano Reflections’ was championed by Classic FM and went straight to number one in the UK Classical chart. This year’s ‘Young Artists Series’ includes Welsh percussionist William Edwards and Israeli violinist Itamar Rashkovsky. Oboist Manou Rolland and violinist Petru Cotarcea, from Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, are performing Schumann Romances and Gershwin classics.
Up-and-coming soprano Keri Fuge, 27 May, is building a stellar reputation. Previous singers at the festival have included outstanding Welsh sopranos Rosemary Joshua and Rebecca Evans, who are now both singing in the world’s top opera houses. The talented 17-year-old, Martin James Bartlett, has been invited back to the Festival to play Beethoven’s second piano concerto with the Welsh Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Hose, 28 May, in a programme that also includes music by Bartok, Handel and Haydn.
Anthony Hose gives a master class for singers who want to sing Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Following last year’s sold-out success of ‘So You Want to Be a Conductor?’, this year the festival’s Artistic Director demonstrates the art of coaching singers at ‘So You Want to sing Gilbert and Sullivan?’. After the master class, the singers will perform a concert, giving the audience an opportunity to hear what changes can be effected in a very short time.
Violin virtuoso Billy Thompson makes a much anticipated return to the Festival with his immensely popular Gypsy Jazz style, promising a cabaret night of high energy, soulful musicianship and panache. Dickens readings with Roger Gartland have been an international success; his appearances with Not the National Theatre enthralled audiences at previous festivals.
A unique opportunity awaits the visitor at the Festival art exhibition, which will attract the history lover, antique collector, sailing enthusiast and would-be treasure-seeker. Called ‘Fragments of the Past – What you can find out about small things’, it shows clay pipes, shoes, lead soldiers, pottery and bottles from a Victorian town dump. The fragments were uncovered temporarily due to the demolition of the old boatmen’s huts at Gallows Point, Beaumaris. This snapshot in time has led artists Alison Englefield and Clare Calder-Marshall to examine nineteenth-century times in the town and bring them back to life, recreating everyday lives from the fragments. The exhibition also celebrates life at ‘The Point’ for the boat-builders before the old corrugated-iron sheds came down and, as one old-timer says, “everything changed”.
The Festival craft fair is in the ‘Marquee on the Green’, 23 to 26 May, with the North Wales craftworkers. The Woodturners Exhibition is in Beaumaris Town Hall, 24 May to 1 June, with the Woodturners Association of Gwynedd.
The Poetry Trio bring ‘Voices from Hurt Battalions’ with a recital of First World War poems by soldiers and non-combatants, including several women, 24 May. A festival lunch will be held at the Bulkeley Hotel with Roger Gartland, RSC actor, and Festival Director Anthony Hose reminiscing about their school days together. Roger will discuss his son’s battle with Multiple Sclerosis and how he was ‘declared free’ of this progressive disease in February 2008. A South African wine tasting, 27 May, with Gavin Shaw, who owned Shaws Wine Merchants in Beaumaris for many years, will discuss how the South African wine industry has been transformed over the last twenty years.
Three ‘Festival Talks’ will be held. The first, ‘The Remarkable David Lloyd George’, 26 May, is by Rufus Adams, a Lloyd George scholar for over fifty years. Rufus will delve into the life of this remarkable Welshman and 1914-18 wartime Prime Minister. The second, ‘Môntage – Readings From A Small Island’, features contemporary Anglesey writers, 28 May. The third is ‘Toward the Unknown Region’, with composer Roger Steptoe discussing his relationship with Ursula Vaughan Williams.
The ‘Festival Plus One’ is an additional day of events to complement the main festival, 29 May. The morning recital by Jeremy Huw Williams, the Welsh baritone with a growing international reputation, will feature pieces influenced by the First World War Centenary. In the evening, the performance by the Welsh Chamber Orchestra and baritone Jeremy Huw Williams, conducted by Anthony Hose, includes Mozart, Mathias and Tchaikovsky and the Welsh premiere of ‘Four Shakespeare Sonnets for Baritone and String Orchestra’ by Roger Steptoe.
“The Festival programme this year is packed with exciting new events, world premieres, events tinged with nostalgia and some firm favourites. As we welcome the world to Beaumaris, we also warmly welcome you to Beaumaris and to our Festival,” says Anthony Hose, the festival’s Artistic Director.
All twenty-two Festival events can be booked online now at http://beaumarisfestival.com and the box office opens in the Bulkeley Hotel on 5 May, telephone 01248 800801.
