Bath International Music Festival | |
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Genre | Orchestral, chamber, classical, jazz, folk, electronica, world |
Dates | 15 May – 26 May |
Location(s) | Bath, England |
Years active | 1948 – 2017 |
The Bath International Music Festival was held late each spring in Bath, South West England between 1948 and 2016. The festival included many genres such as Jazz, Classical, World and Folk and merged with the Bath Literature Festival in 2017 to create a new multi-arts festival, The Bath Festival.
Originally known as the Bath Assembly, [1] the festival was first directed by the impresario Ian Hunter in 1948. [2] After the first year the city tried to run the festival itself, but in 1955 asked Hunter back. In 1959, Hunter invited Yehudi Menuhin to become artistic director of the Festival, a post he held until 1968. [3] The Festival has in the past included non-musical events such as talks and guided walks around the city.
The festival took place annually over 12 days in late May, and staged a range of events featuring orchestral and classical virtuosos, jazz, folk, roots and world musicians, with collaborations and commissioned works. The musicians included established and emerging artists, students from a wide range of conservatoires, universities and colleges, and local musicians, both professional and amateur. The programme was supported with films, talks, multi media events, music theatre, exhibitions, dance and site specific projects.
In 2013, the Bath International Music Festival celebrated its 65th anniversary. [4]
The Bath International Music Festival is organized by Bath Festivals Ltd., a long-established charitably registered independent arts company with charitable status. [9] Bath Festivals Ltd. also run the Bath Literature Festival, as well as a year-round arts-in-education programme. It receives core funding from Bath and North East Somerset Council (B&NES) and Arts Council England. Other key sources of income are ticket and other sales, contributions from trust funds, private donors and a range of commercial sponsors. [10]
Since 1981, the Bath Fringe Festival has taken place at the same time as the music festival.
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, was an American-born violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in Britain. He is widely considered one of the great violinists of the 20th century. He played the Soil Stradivarius, considered one of the finest violins made by Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari.
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of Wellington. Famous academy alumni include Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Elton John and Annie Lennox.
Elaine Shaffer was an American flutist and principal of the Houston Symphony Orchestra between 1948 and 1953.
The Yehudi Menuhin School is a specialist music school in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey, England, founded in 1963 by violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin. The current Director of Music is the British classical pianist Ashley Wass. The school is one of the five established musical schools for school-age children in the United Kingdom, along with Chetham's School of Music, Wells Cathedral School, the Purcell School and St. Mary's Music School, Edinburgh. It is mainly funded by the Department for Education's Music and Dance Scheme, by philanthropic foundations, by donations and bequests from individuals, and by regular support from the Friends of the Yehudi Menuhin School.
Joanna Clare MacGregor is a British concert pianist, conductor, composer, and festival curator. She is Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and a professor of the University of London. She is currently artistic director of the International Summer School & Festival at Dartington Hall.
Hephzibah Menuhin was an American-Australian pianist, writer, and human rights campaigner. She was sister to the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and to the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin. She was also a linguist and writer, co-authoring several books and writing many papers with her second husband, Richard Hauser.
Sir Ian Bruce Hope Hunter was a British impresario of classical music. Known as 'Mr. Festival' to many in the arts world, Hunter was one of the most important figures in a post-World War II cultural renaissance in the United Kingdom. From the mid-1950s, following the death of Harold Holt, he headed the music management agency Harold Holt Ltd, which joined with Lies Askonas Ltd in the late 1990s to form Askonas Holt.
The Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra, Op. 77 by Malcolm Arnold was finished in 1962. It is in three movements:
Igudesman & Joo is a duo comprising classical musicians Aleksey Igudesman and Hyung-ki Joo, whose shows combine comedy with classical music and popular culture.
Britten Sinfonia is a chamber orchestra ensemble based in Cambridge, UK. It was created in 1992, following an initiative from Eastern Arts and a number of key figures including Nicholas Cleobury, who recognised the need for an orchestra in the East of England. It is a flexible ensemble composed of chamber musicians in Europe. The players are freelance musicians who are employed on a project-by-project basis and the ensemble performs around 70 concerts per year and works with hundreds of people in the communities where the orchestra is resident.
Derek Simpson was an English cellist, known primarily from his work with the Aeolian Quartet, and as the teacher of many contemporary cellists.
Aisha Syed Castro is a Dominican violinist and a member of the Yehudi Menuhin School orchestra.
Ivy Priaulx Rainier was a South African-British composer. Although she lived most of her life in England and died in France, her compositional style was strongly influenced by the African music remembered from her childhood. She never adopted 12-tone or serial techniques, but her music shows a profound understanding of that musical language. She can be credited with the first truly athematic works composed in England. Her Cello Concerto was premiered by Jacqueline du Pré in 1964, and her Violin Concerto Due Canti e Finale was premiered by Yehudi Menuhin in 1977.
Bath Bach Choir, formerly The City of Bath Bach Choir (CBBC), is based in Bath, Somerset, England, and is a registered charity. Founded in 1946 by Cuthbert Bates, who also became a founding father of the Bath Bach Festival in 1950, the choir's original aim was to promote the music of Johann Sebastian Bach via periodic music festivals. Bates – an amateur musician with a great love and understanding of this composer's works – was also the CBBC's principal conductor and continued in this role until his sudden death, in April 1980. This untimely exit pre-empted his planned retirement concert performance of J. S Bach's Mass in B minor, scheduled for July of the same year, and effectively ended the first period of the choir's history.
John Richard Noel Phipps, known as “Jack Phipps”, was a British arts administrator.
Schola Cantorum of Oxford is the longest running chamber choir of University of Oxford, and one of the longest established and most widely known chamber choirs in the United Kingdom. The conductor is Steven Grahl.
West Meets East is an album by American violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, released in Britain in January 1967. It was recorded following their successful duet in June 1966 at the Bath Musical Festival, where they had played some of the same material.
West Meets East, Volume 2 is an album by American violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, released in 1968. It is the second album in a trilogy of collaborations between the two artists, after the Grammy Award-winning West Meets East (1967).
Live Music Now is the name of several connected charities around the world, who bring high-quality live music to people in challenging circumstances who rarely, if ever, have the opportunity to experience live music. It was the original idea of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who founded the first Live Music Now in the UK in 1977, together with his friend Ian Stouztker CBE.
Sakar Khan (1938–2013) was an Indian musician, considered by many as the greatest exponent of the Kamayacha, a Rajasthani version of the Persian musical instrument of the same name, popular among the Manganiar community of the Indian desert state. The Government of India honoured Khan in 2012, with the fourth highest civilian award of Padma Shri.