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| The Norwich Nine – Bootworks Theatre Co. and a local group of nine-year-old children – Norfolk & Norwich Festival |
By far the largest arts festival in the East of England and the fourth largest in the UK, the 2025 Norfolk & Norwich Festival (which has been held on an annual basis since 1988) runs from Friday 9 to Sunday 25 May offering a huge variety of work staged in and around the fine city of Norwich.
To give one a glimpse of the programme and an idea of what’s to come, the festival’s energetic, appealing and hard-working artistic director, Daniel Brine, has just announced the first shows ahead of the full programme announcement due in February. They include opening concerts from each of this year’s artists-in-residence Sean Shibe and Lotte Betts-Dean while the Britten Sinfonia returns to the fold plus an exhilarating circus show débuts in Norwich at the Adnams Spiegeltent in Chapel Field Gardens.
Who will be the new face of circus? That’s the question posed in the Adnams Spiegeltent headline show appropriately entitled Showdown. Part talent contest, part beauty pageant, this all-encompassing affair offers a little touch of The Hunger Games about it as the show witnesses half-a-dozen contestants battling it out to reach the top in a puzzling and mind-blowing show conjured up by the multi-award-winning, UK-based contemporary circus company, Upswing, founded by Vicki Dela Amedume in 2006. As the unwritten rules of the game emerge, the question arises: Who makes sure the winner is the right winner?
Who, indeed!
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| Adnams Spiegeltent – Norwich & Norfolk Festival (Photo: Chris Taylor) |
The first of two music residencies will see Edinburgh-born classical and electric guitarist, Sean Shibe, who studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, perform a host of distinct concerts. In the first, he explores ‘forgotten’ works such as Frank Martin’s Quatre Pièces Brèves which was not performed in years until Julian Bream – widely regarded as one of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century who played a significant role in improving the public perception of the classical guitar as a respectable instrument – championed the suite in the 1960s. He’ll also perform Bach’s cello suites reworked for guitar. And alongside these masterpieces, Thomas Adès’ Forgotten Dances – a work invoking composers and artists of bygone times – will be heard.
In the second music residency, Australian-born mezzo-soprano, Lotte Betts-Dean, will explore the full and colourful range of the human voice. In her first concert, she’ll perform works for solo amplified voice with electronics ranging from ground-breaking 20th-century works by Gincinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman and Kurt Schwitters to contemporary pieces that draw on medieval plainchant, experimental electronica and techno including works by Mathis Saunier and Stuart MacRae as well as new additions to the Voice Electric programme by Sara Glojnarić, Georges Aperghis and Cassandra Miller.
In a rearranged visit from last year’s festival, one of the country’s most accomplished novelists, Val McDermid, will celebrate the legacy of the remarkable 19th-century Norwich-born essayist, writer and thinker, Harriet Martineau. McDermid will deliver the Harriet Martineau Lecture as part of the City of Literature Weekend which is presented in partnership with the National Centre for Writing.
Lighting up the stage focuses on Britten Sinfonia’s principal trumpet, Imogen Whitehead, who’ll perform Johann Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto in E major which was first performed on New Year’s Day 1804 to mark Hummel’s entrance into the court orchestra of Nikolaus II, Prince Esterházy, as Haydn’s successor. The orchestra, however, will offer Beethoven’s sparkling first symphony and the haunting work, Fratres, by the eminent and well-loved Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt, now in his 90th year.
The programme also includes a rare performance of Wagner’s stunningly beautiful Siegfried Idyll composed as a birthday present to his second wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son, Siegfried, in 1869. It was first performed on Christmas morning 1870 (Cosima, in fact, was awaken to its opening melody) by a small ensemble of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich on the stairs of the Wagner’s Swiss villa at Tribschen now part of Lucerne. Conductor Hans Richter learned the trumpet in order to play the brief trumpet part and, reportedly, sailed to the centre of Lake Lucerne to practice so as not to be heard.
And The Norwich Nine – a touching and humorous collaboration between Bootworks Theatre Company and local nine-year-olds – will collaborate and create a performance piece to be seen at The Garage, Chapel Field North. Over the course of one week, Bootworks’ artistic director, James Peachey-Baker, will work, play and listen to his young collaborators who have witnessed Donald Trump, Minecraft and COVID-19 – but what do they remember? And, indeed, what’s important to them. At the midpoint between birth and adulthood, this in-depth performance piece (part-theatre, part-vox pop) explores how this group of youngsters view the world and what their vision of the future may look like. Therefore, ‘Nine’ is a project designed to provide a platform for children to tell it how it is, how it was – and how it could be.
And the feats and skills of juggling will come alive in a presentation between the N&N Festival and Norwich Theatre featuring the internationally renowned Gandini Juggling Company. They’ll unveil their sparkling brand-new show, Heka (an Egyptian word for ‘magic’) in a production infused with a blend of humour, philosophy and so much more, in the intimacy of Norwich Playhouse. Drawing their inspiration for their show emanates from the intricate connection between juggling and magic. However, audiences will discover that all’s not as it seems. Indeed, not, Captain Mainwaring!
Tony Cooper
Tickets for these first shows are now sale: www.nnfestival.org.uk / 01603 531800
For regular festival updates, join the mailing list: nnfestival.org.uk
