24th MAY – 4th JUNE: AN EXCEPTIONAL EXHIBITION AT ST JOHN’S CHAPEL, HAY
Petrov Birov is a Ukrainian Iconographer who is fully trained and has been working in churches and painting Icons for some years. He is now in Hay on Wye with his family until it is safe to return home. Meanwhile he has set up a website selling originals, prints and materials.
For more information, please visit www.icon-ex.com.
Christina Watson (Christina Wright) has been a local sign writer and artist for over 45 years, she turned her hand to Iconography after visiting the Coptic Christian Churches in Old Cairo and has been practising the art for 13 years alongside her sign work. Christina gained a Prince’s Trust for Traditional Arts Certificate after training in Shrewsbury for three years with Aidan Hart www.aidanharticons.com. Aidan works internationally.
Some of Christina’s work is also displayed in the Shrine Chapel and around the church of St. Mary the Virgin, Hay on Wye and includes the painting and gilding of the stars in the Apse and the Icon of Christ within.
Please do come and visit the exhibition where there will be Icons, prints and cards on sale, but please be aware that access to this beautiful little chapel would not be possible in a wheelchair and must be entered with care by the disabled, whereas at St. Mary’s Hay on Wye, there is wheelchair access and disabled toilets.
We look forward to welcoming you. Christina and Petrov
EVENTS IN MAY 2024
SATURDAY 4th May 10.30am for 11.00am Organ Recital
This month’s organ recital will be given by Barrie Magill, Choir Master and Organist of St Mary’s Church.
Entry is free with a retiring collection in aid of St Mary’s.
Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available.
SATURDAY 4th May 6.30pm Hay Community Forums Present: The Golden Valley Pilgims’ Way
FRIDAY 10th May 7.00pm
The Tippett String Quartet
“It’s difficult to imagine finer performances than those delivered by the Tippett Quartet.” BBC Music Magazine.
The Quartet’s broad and diverse repertoire highlights its unique versatility and it travels widely to prestigious venues in the UK and Europe as well as having made visits to Canada and Mexico. They will play quartets by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Michael Tippett and Franz Schubert.
The Tippett Quartet performs at Wigmore Hall, BBC Proms, Kings Place, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Bridgewater Hall and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. They have toured Europe, Canada and Mexico. Their broad and diverse repertoire highlights the Tippett Quartet’s unique versatility. They have an impressive catalogue of recordings, most recently being awarded Gramophone Record of the Month for their recording of Gorécki Quartets for Naxos.
The Quartet pursues a keen interest in educational work with both schools and universities. It was Ensemble in Residence at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University for 2012-13 and from 2015 they have been resident at Royal Holloway University, London.
Tickets: £20.00 (under 25s – £10.00). Please note: we are offering a limited number of free tickets to those under 25 years of age, as well as our usual half price under 25s tickets. Free tickets will only be available on a first-come-first served basis.
Tickets and full details at www.haymusic.org . A limited number of free tickets for under 25s offered on a first-come-first-served basis.
HAY FESTIVAL EVENTS MAY/JUNE 2024
BOOK BY PHONE Call the Box Office on 01497 822 629 with your chosen event numbers and your credit or debit card to hand.
The Box Office is open from 9.30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
A booking fee of £3.50 applies to all orders booked online or by phone.
BOOK IN PERSON Hay Festival Box Office, 25 Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye HR3 5AD
From Thursday 23 May 2024 the Box Office moves to the Festival Site on Brecon Road, Hay-on-Wye HR3 5PJ.
Tickets booked in person are exempt from the £3.50 booking fee.
Will Barnes Jazz Quartet: Source of the Severn
The Will Barnes Quartet bring us an auditory treat to Hay Festival. Source of the Severn is their debut album – an evocative, fluid collection mixing hints of Wales with immaculately performed jazz. Will Barnes (guitar) is joined by James Batten (drums), Jack Gonsalez (piano) and Clovis Phillips (bass) – a tight collective of highly experienced jazz instrumentalists. Their original music is a modern take on the classic bebop era with influences of Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans, Pat Metheny and Oscar Peterson, further taking inspiration from the exquisite landscape of Mid Wales and the Marches. The beautiful album artwork by skilled landscape artist Erin Hughes is also very covetable!
Tickets: £16.00
SATURDAY 25th May 11.30am Juliet Russell – Song in an Hour
This is your chance to sing with vocal coach and choir director Juliet Russell, as she teaches the 1980s classic ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ in honour of Wales’ own Bonnie Tyler. You’ll learn warm-ups, harmonies, breathing and performance techniques in this uplifting, inclusive and energising session. Russell has worked with Grammy, BRiT and MOBO artists. Her TV credits include The Voice and Michael McIntyre’s Big Show.
St Mary’s Church in Hay, with its excellent acoustics, is the perfect setting for Hereford Chamber Choir’s performance of its critically acclaimed Dymock Poets Reimagined. This innovative concert focuses on seven contemporary composers and their choral settings of works by the Dymock Poets (who included Robert Frost, Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas, all connected with the Gloucestershire village). Founded in 1983, Hereford Chamber Choir consists of 25 exceptional mixed voices. Under music director Simon Harper, the choir has a reputation for performing exciting programmes of choral music from the medieval era to newly commissioned works.
Well known to Hay Music audiences and acclaimed as a “pianist of extraordinary gifts” (Gramophone) and “immense power” (The Times), Clare Hammond is recognised for the virtuosity and authority of her performances. In 2016, she won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award in recognition of outstanding achievement. In the fine setting of St Mary’s Church, Hammond plays a programme comprising: Clara Schumann: Three Romances Op. 21; Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 ‘Moonlight’; Samy Moussa: Al’assaut des jardins; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sonata in D major, K. 311 and Cécile Chaminade: ‘Impromptu’ Étude de Concert, Op. 35 No. 5 and Étude Romantique, Op. 132.
A BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert series marking the centenary of Gabriel Fauré’s death. This first of four recitals recorded for broadcast explores the music of Fauré and others. James Atkinson (baritone) and Michael Pandya (piano) perform a programme including Fauré, Chausson, Lili Boulanger and Hahn.
Explore the seductive and scandalous life of Lord Byron through a performance of his extraordinary narrative poem, Don Juan. Pianist Clare Hammond and actor Tama Matheson, using music by Felix Mendelssohn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Hélène de Montgeroult, William Grant Still and Isaac Albéniz, celebrate Byron’s inimitable wit in this bicentenary year of his death.
A BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert series marking the centenary of Gabriel Fauré’s death. In this second of four recitals recorded for broadcast, Charles Owen (piano) performs a programme including Fauré, Chopin, Chaminade and Ravel.
BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert series marking the centenary of Gabriel Fauré’s death. In this third, and slightly longer, of four recitals recorded for broadcast, the Leonore Piano Trio and Lawrence Power (viola) perform Le Beau’s Piano Quartet in F minor, Op 28 and Fauré’s Piano Quartet No 2 in G minor, Op 45.
A BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert series marking the centenary of Gabriel Fauré’s death. In this last of four recitals recorded for broadcast, the Leonore Piano Trio performs Fauré’s Piano Trio in D minor, Op 120 and Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor.
Come and join us in the late Georgian-Gothic setting of St Mary’s Church for a special screening of Anthony Asquith’s great 1929 classic silent movie A Cottage on Dartmoor, with live organ accompaniment by Fr.Richard Williams. The film is a psycho-thriller replete with obsession and jealousy, much influenced by German Expressionism, and is one of British cinema’s most highly regarded silent films, the last to be made in the silent period.
Father Richard’s film nights are renowned. Parish priest in Hay from 2001 to until his retirement in 2024, he trained as a professional musician at Trinity College of Music, London. Don’t miss this chance to see him perform a live accompaniment on the Bevington organ.
This versatile and “virtuosic” (Sunday Times) piano trio travel around the globe performing their very extensive repertoire. They also broadcast regularly on BBC Radio 3. In the acoustically excellent setting of St Mary’s Church, Darragh Morgan (violin), Tim Gill (cello) and Mary Dulleah (piano) perform Judith Weir: Piano Trio Two and Franz Schubert: Piano Trio No 2 in E-flat major.
“And how late it is…” So ended Franz Kafka’s final diary entry, dated 12 June 1923, less than a year before he died on 3 June 1924. The last weekend of this year’s Hay Festival coincides with the 100th anniversary of the last two days of Kafka’s life, a tragic moment in literary history but one also charged with hope, because of his irrepressible spirit and immortal work, which survived despite its author’s wishes.
To mark the centenary, the London Review of Books has mined its remarkable archive to publish a chorus of the different ways its writers have thought about Kafka over the years. This one-off performance is interspersed with readings from Kafka’s own later diary entries, with the voices of special guests accompanied by music from Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks, itself inspired by Kafka’s journals, played by the celebrated organist James McVinnie.
