Oundle International Festival - Festival

Festival

The Festival was founded with two aims: foremost was the desire to provide high calibre concerts to serve Oundle and the wider community in this under-provisioned, very rural area. The second aim was to enlighten students attending the concurrent Summer Schools for Young Organists that there are other kinds of music beyond “organ, organ all the time”. Young artists are also encouraged alongside the more established, famous names. For the last years a Festival has been promoted in July, mostly of classical music but with gradual additions over the years, so that the Festival now also encompasses jazz, open-air theatre and various kinds of exhibition, town walks etc. It is seen as a success, with audience numbers increasing year on year.

In 2007 the Festival undertook a community opera for the first time, with three performances of Tobias and the Angel by Jonathan Dove. It was very successful, with three choruses of local people (one comprising around 40 local primary schoolchildren), celebrated professional opera singers and a small orchestra of professional musicians. The performances took place in St Peter's parish church and many local people were involved in costume-making, set design and build and much else.

Concerts are also now promoted at other times of the year, under the Festival banner. ‘Music in Quiet Places’ serves the local community by bringing a series of professional concerts to rural villages in May and June.

Since 1994 a fundraising jazz & firework concert has been held on Oundle School playing fields, which has become the highlight of the year in this small market town, attracting an audience of up to 5,000 from all over the Midlands.