THIRTY-SIX events over a ten-day period have been unveiled for this year’s Liberation International Music Festival.
In what is the 16th such event organised by Music in Action, a range of acclaimed performers will appear in venues across the Island, supplementing public performances with educational masterclasses and workshops.
Among the leading performers returning to the festival are French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, who is joined by Andrea Nemecz in a performance of Mozart’s Double Piano concerto, Grammy award-winning bass Sir Willard White and jazz stars Jason Rebello and Tim Garland, who top the bill in an afternoon of jazz at Hamptonne.
Another highlight is the combination of top musicians – So-Ock Kim (violin), Maxim Rysanov (viola), Dora Kokas (cello) and Wu Qian (piano) – who come together as a piano quartet at the Jersey Museum for a dinner concert featuring works by Mozart, Beethoven and Fauré. The performers have toured together worldwide, as well as performing at the Verbier Festival, the Lincoln Centre, New York, and the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.
Sir Willard White, who this season is appearing as Bartolo in the Bayerische Staatsoper’s production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, gives a song recital with pianist Anna Tilbrook of music from Schubert to Bernstein at the Jersey Arts Centre on 16 May.
The festival also includes a second concert at the Arts Centre the following evening, with violinist Harriet Mackenzie joined by Anna Tilbrook, who provide a musical backdrop to the work of French surrealists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who came to live in the Island before the Second World War. The music of Boulanger, Gershwin and Joplin features, with a script by Flora MacAngus, incorporating an extract of a theatre-piece about the artists’ lives and work.
St Helier Methodist Centre – which has become home in recent years to the Jersey Chamber Orchestra – is again the venue for the festival’s orchestral concert on 11 May in which the Mozart Double concerto features with a performance of Haydn’s Symphony No 47, sometimes known as the Palindrome because of the minuet’s novel construction using a motif that reverses the notes of the opening theme.
After a seven-year break, live jazz returns to Hamptonne on 18 May, when pianist Jason Rebello and saxophonist Tim Garland are appearing with violinist Harriet Mackenzie and Jersey keyboard player Ruben Maric and his band, Plantfood.
Chairman of Music in Action James Mews said that the theme of this year’s festival was particularly pertinent in the 80th anniversary year of the D-Day landings. “With masterpieces, rarely performed treasures and a myriad of genres, there is something for everyone,” he said.
Full details of the festival programme – which also include guided walks with music – are available at: musicjersey.com/liberation-festival-2024, where there are links to buy tickets.
