Tickets go on sale today (Friday 17 March) for The Bath Festival 2023, which is hosting more than 130 events over ten days, from Friday 12 May to Sunday 21 May.
This internationally acclaimed festival, celebrating music and books, makes the most of the city as its backdrop, as well as featuring locally based writers and musicians. The festival, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, has introduced a new flexible pricing system for tickets, with the aim of making live arts events more accessible to a wider audience.
Highlights include the Concert for the People of Bath at The Forum, featuring Bath Philharmonia with guest violinist superstar Esther Yoo and the Schools’ Voices choir. Anyone who was in the audience last May, for the first performance by the mass school choir will testify that this was a moving experience.
This year more than 100 young singers from 11 State and private schools in the Bath area will take part in creative workshops with professionals from Bath Philharmonia, when they will write and perform their own compositions, which will then be showcased before an audience of around 1,000 people.
- Fans of The Great British Sewing Bee will be able to hear Esme Young talk about her fascinating career and life, with Sewing Bee’s youngest winner Serena Baker.
- Comedian Fern Brady talks about her book, Strong Female Character, in which she looks at how being female can get in the way of being autistic and how being autistic gets in the way of being the ‘right kind’ of woman.
- Henry Dimbleby, founder of the Leon restaurant chain, and author of Ravenous: how to get ourselves and our planet into shape will discuss the hot topic of our food supply chain.
- Anyone fascinated by the space race between the US, India and China, will want to hear geopolitics writer Tim Marshall (author of The Future of Geography) speak knowledgably about what this might mean for us on Earth. There are dozens of events centred around books, covering a huge range of topics, both fiction and non-fiction.
- Resident young orchestra the Bath Festival Orchestra will be putting on a series of free pop-up performances during the opening weekend of the festival. Children interested in playing musical instruments can get close to the musicians at a free open rehearsal session in St Michael’s Church (near Waitrose in Bath) from 11.30am to 1.30pm on Saturday 13 May.
- There is also an opportunity to join in a poetry open mic session, which will include spoken word performance by three local poets and the chance to sign up to perform your own work.
Save the date: for an evening of free live music in Bath city centre, be sure to make a note of Friday 12 May, to go to Party in the City. There will be choirs, bands and solo artists in churches, museums, restaurants and bars and a programme of live music outside in Queen Square and Parade Gardens. Keep an eye on The Bath Festival website for details nearer the time.
For full programme details and to buy tickets visit: thebathfestival.org.uk