Edington Music Festival

About

This year we follow journeys made along ways and roads in the Holy Land, whether in preparation for the coming of the Lord in Isaiah, or in charting Jesus’s life and works as recorded in the Gospels. Travelling these roads will allow us to examine Jesus as the way, the truth and the life, and provide the framework from which our musical and liturgical reflections will emerge.

It will also allow us to celebrate the anniversaries of the birth of the leading composer of the late 16th century, Palestrina, and of some more recent composers, Sir John Rutter and Bob Chilcott, whose compositions for the season of Christmas rarely feature in our August worship. In between, there is a wide range of music from Byrd, Gibbons, and Hassler, through to Warlock, Daley and McDowall taking in favourites such as Stanford, Howells and Britten en route. The three choirs will sing at four daily services including Choral Evensong, recorded for later broadcast on BBC Radio 3, on Wednesday afternoon, a rare liturgical performance of Wood’s Mark Passion on Friday evening, and Choral Matins on both Friday and Saturday mornings. There is much to savour, and we hope you will enjoy the prospect the leaflet describes…

To mark our 70th festival, it is pleasing to be able to recognise the impact several of our alumni have made in the form of Responses by Ashley Grote, Julian Thomas and Matthew Martin. Similarly, we are delighted to welcome back five of the festival’s former organists to play before the evening services. After 24 summers, however, Matthew Martin has decided to pass on the baton. His contribution to the festival has been immense and we shall miss him enormously: we hope to tempt him down in due course to thank him in person for all that he has given us. We are delighted that Alexander Hamilton, newly appointed as Director of Music at His Majesty’s Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, has agreed to succeed Matthew and welcome him warmly.

We look forward to welcoming you to the festival in August!