IF: Milton Keynes International Festival is back and musically marvellous!
On 24 July the outdoor Amphitheatre in Milton Keynes’ Campbell Park, a new venue for the Festival, plays host to Orchestra for the Earth.
This innovative young orchestra brings together some of the finest young professional musicians, all committed to connecting audiences around the world with music and nature, highlighting climate change and the natural world.
Here they collaborate with environmental charity For the Trees to draw attention to how deforestation in Brazil is decimating the population of Pernambuco trees, the source of the wood used to make bows for stringed instruments.
The programme is Frank Bridge’s Moonlight (from the Sea Suite for Orchestra), Beethoven’s 2nd Symphony in D Major Op 36 and Elgar’s elegiac Cello Concerto in E Minor Op 85 played by rising star cellist, Rebecca McNaught.
In centre:mk’s Middleton Hall, the Earth Music Series is three concerts set under Luke Jerram’s inspirational sculpture of planet Earth, Gaia.
On 16 July, award-winning folk duo Ninebarrow use their exceptional vocal harmonies and original songwriting to tell stories rooted in the landscape and history of the British Isles.
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On 21 July, a concert by virtuoso multi-instrumentalist Baluji Shrivastav OBE with Nafees Irfan on tablas features Moon-inspired ragas on sitar. On 29 July, virtuoso Syrian musician Maya Youssef plays the qanun, the 78-stringed Middle Eastern plucked zither. For her, the act of playing music is a life-affirming act - an antidote to what is happening across the world.
From 14 to 18 July Drake Music’s Planted Symphony is an immersive music experience in the green spaces of Canalside in Campbell Park.
For this accessible and interactive outdoor audio trail audiences download the Planted Symphony app and enter a narrative which leads them through the space, transformed with installations, with the six-part composition, songs and stories triggered via GPS location technology.
It was created by disabled and non-disabled artists working together, with initial compositions by Lucy Hale, and story and song lyrics by Dave Young.
On 17 and 18 July the Stables Sessions are presented in a weekend of open-air live music performances in on the Bulbfield Stage in Campbell Park.
Programmed by Festival producers The Stables, the Sessions put a spotlight on new sounds, emerging talent and unsigned artists. The artists include Lizzy Hardingham, Anna Hester, Candi's Dog, Manny & The Coloured Sky (pictured) and Labyrinth (on 17 July) and Hannah Scott, Smith and Brewer, Joe Miles, Inlak’esh and Fred's House (on 18 July).
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