Welcome to the 2018 Programme

"I’m delighted to share with you the programme for this year’s Festival. Once again we bring you a box of delights to fill the midsummer days in Orkney with performances across the islands. We will explore the world of chamber music with many performances ranging from renowned duo Tom Poster and Elena Urioste’s survey of violin and piano repertoire to Ensemble Perpetuo’s take on Bach’s Goldberg Variations interspersed with newly commissioned responses. Solo cello, guitar and accordion take us to venues across the Orkney Islands and even on-board the tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl visiting from Bergen.

Singing is also a feature of this year’s event and we are delighted to welcome the exciting choir Sonoro bringing the iconic Rachmaninov Vespers to the evening glow of St Magnus Cathedral. Sonoro will also join the Festival chorus to present Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. The internationally acclaimed soprano, Measha Brueggergosman, brings a fascinating concert leading Orkney Rocks! and the Mayfield Singers in Songs of Freedom. Old friends the Danish Sinfonietta pay a return visit with concerts and an opera, a comedy about a feisty chambermaid, and Zoë Martlew presents her highly entertaining cabaret Revue Z full of jokes, sequins, a cello and feather boas.

Bjarte Eike’s Barokksolistene brings together a band of international performers equally at home with folk music as they are with period performance. They will bring their famous Music at the Alehouse programme alongside a more melancholy review of the music of Henry Purcell.

We’re moving outdoors again this year with a live stage next to Skaill House featuring the extraordinary Subtilu-Z from Lithuania and Orkney’s own The Chair as headline acts.

I’m delighted that the award-winning poet Sinéad Morrissey joins us and look forward, in this the Year of Young People, to not one but two Johnsmas Foys created by pupils from Kirkwall Grammar School and Stromness Academy.

There are so many things to look forward to and we look forward to seeing you in June.

Alasdair Nicolson - Festival Director

2018 Programme in pdf format here

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