Swaledale Festival

The Swaledale Festival takes place over two weeks in May and June each year, in churches, chapels, castles, ‘Literary Institutes’, pubs, fields and village halls scattered around Swaledale, Arkengarthdale and Wensleydale. The largest venues seat about 400 people; the smallest venues as few as 40. The main focus of the Festival is on small-scale classical chamber music. Choral music, folk music, brass bands and jazz also feature, as do talks, films, exhibitions, poetry readings, workshops and guided walks. Among others, the festival has featured the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Natalie Clein, Nicholas Daniel, Don Paterson, Emma Johnson, Julian Perkins, Martin Simpson, Martin Taylor and the Navarra Quartet.

In 2011, the Festival was described by The Guardian as one of the 10 best classical music festivals, and by the Daily Telegraph as one of the 25 opera and classical festivals of the season. The Guardian again featured the Festival in its 2012 and 2013 Festival Guides, in a short list which included Aldeburgh, the BBC Proms, Bath, Cheltenham and Glyndebourne. The Festival attracts around 7,000 visitors a year.

A key feature of the Swaledale Festival is the commitment to new commissions and recently composed works; commissioned pieces by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Michael Brough and Heather Fenoughty received their premières in 2012, and the 2013 Festival included premières of works by Sally Beamish, David Blake, Stephen Goss, Tim Garland, Roland Dyens and Graham Coatman.