Under the title of Dream Differently, Manchester International Festival is taking over Aviva Studios and spreading across the city from 3 to 20 July 2025 with a wide selection of boundary pushing art and culture. Director and choreographer Jonathan Watkins is recreating Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, A Single Man as a dance work in collaboration with singer-songwriter John Grant and composer Jasmin Kent Rodgman with songs performed by Grant, and dancers from the Royal Ballet as well as guest artists, and the score performed by Manchester Collective.
There is a world premiere from renowned Sufi composer Rushil Ranjan, co-founder of the Orchestral Qawwali Project, with the Manchester Camerata and legendary Sufi vocalist Jyoti Nooran. The Hallé and its new principal conductor Kahchun Wong, present Sounds of the East with music by Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung, Debussy and the UK premiere of Kahchun Wong’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition in a version that incorporates Chinese traditional instruments.
Mary Anne Hobbs and Anna Phoebe present a performance that will only ever be performed once, in the form it takes at the festival. Bringing together live DJing, sound design and voice, with violins, viola and live electronics, Hobbs and Phoebe will explore the question that resonates with us all in the age of attention-obliteration: WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Part sculptural installation, part soundscape, part immersive experience, Germaine Kruip’s A Possibility at The Royal Northern College of Music invites audiences to transcend the immediate and explore a world of infinite possibilities. Tthe piece features music by Emily Howard and Hahn Rowe performed by percussionists using Kruip’s specially made brass sculptures.
Full details from the festival website.
