Six shows for next year’s Norfolk and Norwich Festival have gone on sale.
The 2023 festival will run from May 12 to 28 with the full programme due to be announced in February next year, but six shows have been revealed early.
Country and bluegrass musician Rhiannon Giddens will be playing at St Andrew’s Hall on the Festival’s opening weekend, Friday 12 May with Italian singer-songwriter Francesco Turrisi. The duo will be performing their acclaimed album They’re Calling Me Home which won the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album this year.
International circus troupe Chelsea McGuffin & Co will present their neo-vaudevillian production Le Coup on an extended run. Bringing together acrobatics, magic, dance and live music, the show is a tribute to funfairs, travelling boxing troupes and the showmen and women of yesteryear. The show will headline the Adnams Spiegeltent in Chapelfield Gardens from May 17 to 28.
Contemporary classical music groups 12 Ensemble and GBSR Duo will join forces on Friday 19 May at St Andrew’s Hall to perform pieces from a range of exciting emerging and established composers. The programme includes works by Mica Levi from the 2014 film Under The Skin starring Scarlett Johannson, a world premiere of a Norfolk & Norwich Festival co-commission by Laurence Osborn reinventing the tombeau genre – works written by one composer on the death of another – and Ambient 2 by pioneering British artist Brian Eno.
The Hallé orchestra will team up with German conductor Kevin John Edusei, former chief conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra and the Bern Opera House, and Argentinian pianist Nelson Goerner. They will be performing American composer Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), written in ‘the shape of a solar system’ and Dvořák’s sunny Eighth Symphony.
Festival regulars Britten Sinfonia will return with Musical Everests performing music by Britten, Tippett, Maconchy and Phibbs. The orchestra will play rare work from 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and the summitting of Mt Everest, alongside the premiere of brand new work.
Sensory theatre makers Frozen Light return to the Festival with an immersive sensory sound experience for audiences with profound and multiple learning disabilities. Fire Songs will be performed in collaboration with Thetford Singers and singers from across Norfolk and Norwich, and is a work co-commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival and The Garage.
Festival director Daniel Brine said: “After celebrating the festival’s monumental 250th anniversary earlier this year, we are excited to continue showcasing local and international talent across the city and county in 2023. The line-up perfectly captures the Festival’s mission to showcase a variety of extraordinary artists here in East Anglia, from thrilling acrobatics and astounding orchestras to cutting edge contemporary work and accessible art for everyone.”
- Tickets are on sale now by calling 01603 531800, visiting nnfestival.org.uk or in person at Norwich Guildhall.
