2023
Alexander Krichel, István Simon and Juliane Banse perform Winterreise.
Welcome to the Oxford International Song Festival impact report. I am delighted to be reflecting on another tremendous year for the Festival; we end 2023 under our new name and visual identity, having presented one of our most ambitious and exciting programmes so far. Now in its Sholto Kynoch 22nd year, the Festival – Art:Song – Artistic Director Images, Words, Music – was one of our busiest and most successful to date. We engaged over 250 artists and speakers at 74 events in 25 venues across 16 days, with events exploring visual art, poetry, fashion and dance all in tandem with classical song. My heartfelt thanks go to our 1828 Syndicate, Artistic Director’s Circle, Schubert Circle, Friends, and the charitable trusts and foundations who support us – all that we have achieved in 2023 simply wouldn’t be possible without your continued support.
with St Frideswide has begun very well indeed and I look forward to reporting more on that later in the year.
Alongside the main Festival, our year-round education programmes continue to go from strength to strength. The first cohort of Oxford Song Young Artists finished their year-long tenure by curating our spring minifestival ‘A Grimm Weekend of Song’ in April, presenting wonderfully inventive fairytale-themed concerts in a fantastic showcase of their artistry and professional development. Our new partnership with local primary school St Frideswide has been a great success; we worked with all pupils from Early Years to Key Stage 2 over three academic terms delivering a range of creative and singing activities, and also helped the school to compose a new school song. Our second year working
2024 is already set to be a very exciting year: we will be announcing full details of this year’s Festival very soon (please save 11-26 October in the meantime!), and we are also laying the groundwork for major plans as we look forward to celebrating Schubert’s Bicentenary in 2028. In the meantime I hope that you enjoy reading the enclosed and thank you so much again for your continued support.
Song Futures, our programme dedicated to contemporary classical song, was one of this year’s Festival highlights. Alex Ho completed his tenure as our Associate Composer with song cycle The Glass Eye, one of the most substantial and impressive works we have commissioned to date, and you can hear the Radio 3 broadcast of the world premiere, performed magnificently by Hugh Cutting and Dylan Perez, as part of the New Music Show on BBC Sounds. In September, in a collaboration with Oxford’s Humanities Cultural Programme, I was delighted to give the inaugural performance for the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities with former Oxford Song Young Artist Harriet Burns –complete with hard hats in a building site! Cultural partnerships with a wide range of organisations in Oxford and further afield are a fundamental part of our programming and we look forward to more artistic collaborations in the years to come.
Photo © Jason Warner, Fyrefly Studios
IMPACT REPORT