Two resident artists, a new circus show, and a literary lecture are among the early highlights for the 2025 Norfolk and Norwich Festival.
Circus company Upswing will be bringing Showdown to the festival’s Adnams Spiegeltent. Part talent contest, part beauty pageant, and with a little touch of Hunger Games, six contestants battle it out to reach the top.
In the first of two music residencies, guitarist Sean Shibe will perform across several concerts, playing ‘forgotten’ works including Frank Martin’s Quatre Pièces Brèves, Bach’s Cello Suites, reworked for guitar, the first recorded performance of which took place over 100 years after they were likely written. Alongside these, Thomas Adès’ Forgotten Dances invoke composers and artists of bygone times.
In the second music residency, mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean’s appearances includes a concert of works for solo amplified voice with electronics, with works by Scelsi, Feldman, and Schwitters, and contemporary pieces that draw on medieval plainchant, experimental electronica and techno.
In a rearranged visit from 2024’s Festival, crime novelist Val McDermid will celebrates the legacy of the 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, presented in partnership with the National Centre for Writing.
Britten Sinfonia’s principal trumpet Imogen Whitehead will perform Hummel’s 1803 concerto. The orchestra will also perform Beethoven’s sparkling first symphony, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, and Fratres by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
The Norwich Nine is a collaboration between Bootworks Theatre and local nine-year-old children. At the midpoint between birth and adulthood, the show will explore how a group of nine-year olds see the world and what their vision of the future might look like.
Presented in partnership with Norwich Theatre, Gandini Juggling will bring a new show, Heka, to Norwich Theatre Playhouse, promising to blend humour and philosophy.
- The full festival will run from 9 to 25 May 2025. Tickets for the initial batch of shows are on sale now from the Norfolk and Norwich Festival website.
