Norfolk & Norwich Festival Announces Full Programme for 250th anniversary

Festival Director Daniel Brine has today announced the full programme for Norfolk & Norwich Festival's 250th anniversary edition. With its origins going as far back as 1772, Norfolk & Norwich Festival is considered to be the oldest single-city arts Festival in the UK.

The wide-ranging 'Festival 250' programme for 2022 revisits seminal works premiered at the Festival as well as introducing 18 new commissions. Installations, exhibitions, gigs, cabaret, circus and even giant dominoes will be presented on beaches, in churches, at pop-up venues, chapels, art centres, in car parks and through the streets across the county from King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth to Diss and Sheringham and throughout Norwich. Festival Gardens will be a place to eat, drink and gather for the duration, with al fresco performances from local artists as well as international performances in the Adnams Spiegeltent. Transforming the city and country each May for 17 days, the 2022 edition of the Festival runs 13 - 29 May. Booking opens on Wednesday 9 March.

Daniel Brine, Festival Director said: "We're looking forward to a wonderful Festival. One which will celebrate our history, our philanthropic origins, our rich music commissioning heritage, but this milestone is also about looking to the future. Across the programme you will find many elements created by children and young people. 2022 will be an exhilarating time to be in Norwich and around Norfolk as we celebrate culture and the creative future of this place we live in."

The Festival launches its 2022 programme with an exhilarating and charming giant domino topple, creating a larger-than-life celebration across the city. During the course of the day thousands of breezeblock dominoes will create a meandering path before the topple that evening, starting at Anglia Square.

Now recognised for transforming public spaces, city streets, performance venues, parks, forests and beaches, the Festival began as a cathedral service fundraiser for the new Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in 1772. It quickly blossomed into an internationally renowned triennial music festival and there are a plethora of events in the programme this year that both touch on the traditions of old as well as imagine the new: 250 Fanfares sees 9 new free and open-air commissions popping up over the opening weekend in keeping with the long tradition of fanfares at the Festival, the nine young composers include: James Batty, Cameron Biles-Liddell, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Nneka Cummins, Misha Mullov-Abbado, Laurence Osborn, Alexander Paxton, Shruthi Rajasekar and Ayanna Witter-Johnson; In a special fundraiser for the Jenny Lind Children's Hospital, the Festival presents a programme celebrating Lind, an artist and a humanitarian whose bond with the people of Norfolk resonates today, and a nod to the very first fundraiser Norfolk & Norwich Festival in 1772. Fairytales & Nightingales charts her life in Sweden, reimagines her career through the music of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Robert and Clara Schumann and follows Lind on her path to stardom. The project is devised by acclaimed pianist and conductor Simon Crawford-Phillips who is accompanied by modern-day 'Swedish Nightingale' Hanna Husáhr and violist and violinist, Lawrence Power; Lost & Found Films of Norfolk sees artists and children create short films that tell the story of imagined fictitious events from the past, present or future of Norfolk; Every Step is a Different Height will see artists Lone Twin create a guild of volunteers who walk audience through the unique spaces of the mediaeval Guildhall which is now the Festival's home and remember 250 years of Festivals past. At the end of the Festival the Britten Sinfonia and Norwich Philharmonic Chorus join forces to crown Festival 250 with Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Tudor Portraits in the composer's 150th anniversary year. Commissioned by the Festival and premiered in St Andrew's Hall in 1936, in a performance conducted by the composer, Five Tudor Portraits sets words by John Skelton. Other 250 events include the Festival Foundations Exhibition curated by volunteers and revealing the origins of the Festival and a talk with Norfolk born Rob Mitchell who released a book last year chronicling the history of the UK's oldest arts festival.

The Festival includes world premieres and Festival commissions such as: a new work from Sō Percussion and Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw who combine forces in a concert that also presents the UK premiere of new work from Angelica Negron; clarinettist and composer Arun Ghosh presents a spiritual jazz re-imagining of St. Francis of Assisi's mystical prayer, The Canticle of the Sun performed by a contemporary eight-piece ensemble featuring Camilla George and Sarathy Korwar; celebrated for their stunning performances of Gesualdo's extraordinary late madrigals, Exaudi performs a selection of these intense and anguished vocal dramas, alongside two premieres by young UK-based composers, Sylvia Lim and Joanna Ward, written in response to Gesualdo's works; Side by Side sees ensembles appear across Norfolk in a creative trail of free live performances, culminating with a massed, open-air concert in Festival Gardens, featuring a new work for the occasion by Pete Letanka; Fire Songs by theatremakers Frozen Light which presents an immersive sensory sound experience for audiences with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) that will travel the cosmos with an hour of original music; Air Giants Unfurl - a huge and beautiful installation made from interactive gentle giants created by roboticists, and designers; Dutch sound artists Strijbos & Van Rijswijk (Walk With Me, 2018) transform Great Yarmouth, from the beach to the city, with soundscapes matching your pace and the landscape in Signal on Sea, in Signal at Dusk site-specific live soprano performances accompany the installation, providing a captivating transformation of the town and beach around them.

Other commissions and premieres include: Community Chest by Matthew Harrison, Timeless by Joli Vyann, Look Mum, No Hands! by Daryl Beeton Productions and Mimbre, Big Gay Disco Bike from Fatt Projects, Theatre Témoin's Flood, Scrum by Avant Garde Dance and Tony Adi Gun and Lives of Clay combining classical indian dance and live ceramics and The Album:Skool Edition celebrating making up dances, all across the Garden Party weekend in Festival Gardens.

A diverse performance programme for 2022 includes site specific work in Norwich such as Peaceophobia by Bradford born car lovers in Rose Lane Car Park - part car-meet, part theatre show and powerful political performance, it is an unapologetic response to rising Islamophobia. The Halls houses two dance shows: acclaimed dance-theatre company Lost Dog present their latest show A Tale of Two Cities - a radical reimagining of Dickens' classic - following their unconventional takes on Paradise Lost and Romeo and Juliet and internationally-renowned Sydney hip-hop dance artist Nick Power's Between Tiny Cities where Australian and Cambodian dancers Erak Mith and Aaron Lim use the rituals, movement styles and language of their shared hip-hop culture to reveal the different worlds that surround them; as well as the return of universally acclaimed Gandini Juggling with Smashed 2, including 80 oranges, 7 watermelons, 9 performers and inspired by Pina Bausch, the original is a seminal piece of work and was a Festival sell-out in 2018. Following a run at the 2021 Festival Luke Styles and Jessica Walker's The People's Cabaret returns to work with participants in Diss and Sheringham to explore the history, ideas and uses of protest songs, creating new ones for the 2023 Festival.

Circus returns to the Adnams Spiegeltent with Cirque Alfonse's Edinburgh Festival showstopper Barbu all the way from Canada with full on beards, barrel chests, brazen burlesque and a frenetic electro-folk band and Claire Parson's tactile Marmalade for families mixing soft circus, fluffy skirts and Fellini music. Later night work comes from festival favourites Le Gateau Chocolat & Jonny Woo who return to the city with their favourite musical hits, from Gypsy to The Little Mermaid in the fabulous A Night at the Musicals and the riotous Figs in Wigs with Astrology Bingo - a hilarious cosmic game show. At The Garage, for families of all ages, is a fun performance about the painfully awkward subject of sex, The Family Sex Show, exploring names, functions, boundaries, pleasure, queerness, sex and gender and at Norwcih Arts Centre Lewis Buxton presents Workout! a funny, inventive and heart-wrenching poetry-theatre show about exercise and anxiety.

Music takes centre stage in Festival Gardens in the Adnams Spiegeltent and with the return of the bandstand, showcasing al fresco performers from up and coming music-makers (full programme to be announced). Programme includes: Peggy Seeger, the undisputed queen of folk and political song with her son for a memorable evening of songs, stories, audience participation; 11-piece jazz ensemble Levitation Orchestra featuring London's most creative and individual young musicians; Protest singer folk singer-songwriter Grace Petrie; Broadside Hacks, a new collective of musicians steeped in folk clubs and high octane and anthemic tunes doused with breathless improvisation dat Brass present a pioneering a mix of punk jazz, turntablism and electronica. The Festival also teams up with Soul Stew to present its first ever club night as with DJ Jossy Mitsu at Space Studios

The music programme for 2022 showcases some of the most captivating classical and contemporary classical works alongside lesser heard gems. Alongside 250 Fanfares, Five Tudor Portraits, Fairytales & Nightingales and Exaudi Vocal Ensemble the programme includes: the multi-award winning Heath Quartet performing Britten's third String Quartet, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's rhapsodic 1834 composition, and Purcell's exquisitely constructed Fantasias; at Octagon Chapel audiences can enter into Heinrich Biber's experimental musical mind in the Mystery Sonatas for violin and continuo, performed by Daniel Pioro and James McVinnie over three consecutive evenings; this year's BBC New Generations Artists concerts from young musicians set to be generation-defining artists including Helen Charlston and Toby Carr performing works by Monteverdi, Purcell, and Strozzi, alongside Battle Cry, a new song cycle by Owain Park and Georgia Way, Cellist Anastasia Kobekina in a programme of Bach's Cello Suites played complete over two evenings, Swiss-Albanian singer Elina Duni and British jazz guitarist Rob Luft with Fred Thomas Lost Ships and early Romantic musicians Consone Quartet; Festival favourite Steven Osborne returns, as does 2021 choral success Compline by Candlelight at Norwich Cathedral.

Elsewhere across the 17 days audiences will have the chance to see: virtuoso composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal and his band with National Youth Jazz Orchestra; one of the undisputed masters of the music world, sarod virtuoso Amjad Ali Khan with his sons Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash; Clarinettist and composer Arun Ghosh presents a spiritual jazz re-imagining of St. Francis of Assisi's The Canticle of the Sun performed by an eight-piece ensemble featuring Camilla George and Sarathy Korwar; Sō Percussion and Pulitzer Prize-winner, Caroline Shaw with two UK premieres; the return of Sean Shibe with an all-electric guitar programme including Steve Reich's mesmeric Electric Counterpoint and his own arrangement of Julia Wolfe's LAD; an evening with Anna Meredith and her band of virtuosic musicians and critically acclaimed American poet, musician, and activist Camae Ayewa, AKA Moor Mother performs a genre-defying gig at The Halls.

As ever the Festival will present a large programme of free, outdoor work for audiences to enjoy. As well as Dominoes and Air Giants Unfurl, there is free music across the city and in Festival Gardens throughout the Festival and the Garden Party where families can see seven new commissions over the middle weekend. For 2022 they will also present Ad/Dressing the City for the whole of May which draws on the early tradition of the Festival, in which city shopkeepers would dress their windows to celebrate it's return. This year 10 Norfolk artists have been commissioned to create a window display for independent businesses in Norwich, celebrating Norwich's creativity and creating a Festival buzz across the city.

Celebrating 10 years since Norwich was crowned UNESCO City of Literature becoming part of the global network of world-class creative cities, the City of Literature Weekend returns through the streets, gardens and historic buildings of Norwich (27 - 29 May) featuring: A. K. Blakemore and Guinevere Glasfurd, Mieko Kawakami, Richard Mainwaring, debut authors and UEA alumni Melissa Fu and Ayanna Lloyd Banwo. This year's Harriet Martineau Lecture will be from bestselling novelist, memoirist and literary activist Kit de Waal. The lecture celebrates the legacy of a remarkable, pioneering woman discussing their life and work each year at Norfolk & Norwich Festival. Throughout the weekend, the National Centre for Writing will also host book clubs, writing and bookmaking workshops and a literary walking tour of Norwich.

The Festival's visual arts programme is vast this year with both exhibitions of its own as well as events around the county taking part: internationally renowned conceptual artist Ryan Gander presents The Gift, an exhibition examining the currency of time at East Gallery from 3 May where new works centre around Everything is Broken Down and each visitor is offered a free gift. Gander's More really shiny things that don't mean anything will also be displayed in the landscape at Houghton Hall. Delving into the different communities and subcultures of Norfolk, the Festival has commissioned Posters, Pamphlets & other Paraphernalia. From 90s football programmes to DIY zines, goblincore to glossy mags, an array of creative voices from different communities will be displayed. The Festival also includes exhibitions in Norwich at Houghton Hall, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Crypt Gallery as well as trails and exhibitions around King's Lynn and at Groundwork Gallery.

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