Sounds of Summer Festivals
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Catching sight of the grey sky framing your screen as your mouse hovers over the PAY button securing your tickets to the Glastonbury mudfest there is still time to consider an alternative way to get your summer music fix... Along the same theme as Glastonbury - camping and rocking - but cleaner, earlier and more tame due to less numbers is the Isle of Skye Music Festival. Further a field and with less mud is Roskilde - a good chance to party with the Danes who break the ice with the traditional naked race. Or to avoid the mud completely join the Berlin Love Parade, more electro and club music, which marches the tarmacked city streets or reggae’s party of parties, Sumfest , held on the beach at Montego Bay. For a smoother summer vibes get down with jazz and soul sounds at MoldeJazz (funky name but it’s Norway’s largest jazz festival.), or some swing, funk, gospel, blues, latin, electro and big band at the North Sea Jazz Festival. The main event of old skool, smoky club jazz is the New Orleans Jazz Festival or take advantage of 11 days of free events at the world class Montreal International Jazz Festival. If the thought of something a bit more elegant is starting to appeal the Nice Jazz Festival gives this Riviera city a glowing pulse and the Umbria Jazz Festival has both the old and new talent and the summer postcard setting. St. Petersburg’s White Nights are an eclectic mix of the best entertainment around, followed by parties in the night light, and while the Salzburg Festival with its ‘Sound of Music’ connotations and the Bath International Music Festival may seem a bit staid the programmes advertise the best new talent as well as the old classical favourites. It’s easy for the opera buffs, Puccini, Rossini and Verdi all have their own summer events, set against Italian backdrops as romantic as the operas they wrote. Even acquired taste Wagner has an annual event, which he initiated, to showcase his own grand works. For less passionate more religious tones, classical festivals celebrating Bach and Beethoven are held in Leipzig and Bonn respectively, taking over local medieval churches and beautiful Rhine castles, music permeating entire towns and cities. Wildcard entries for eclectic musical tastes, or if tickets are become sparse are WOMAD, Prague’s World Roma Festival and the free street party and amateur musical cacophony that is Paris Fete de la Musique, when Paris gets loud, musical and rowdy for the solstice. If indecision has now lost you those Glastonbury tickets you can probably still get some for the heaving, swaying picnic that is the Last Night of the Proms. |
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Not just Music Festivals... » My Selection of Summer Sounds
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The White Nights FestivalFestivals in Saint Petersburg, Russia During the summer months of May and June in St. Petersburg the city is so far north that the sun never quite sets, with both twilight and dusk leading only to daylight. A festival was born, to celebrate the arts of ballet, opera and classical music in the mystical atmosphere of white, northern light that bathes the city. Carnivals also occur, the largest in the suburb of Peterhof, with actors in costume creatively portraying historical figures and events. The festival, bearing the same name as the natural phenomena which provides the ambience, is a fantastic dose of culture, enhanced by the beauty of nature. Just be sure to remember that although it's never dark out, you still need to go to bed at some point!
Review by Photo by flickr user zabara_tango |
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Jazz FestFestivals in New Orleans, United States The spirit of Jazz Fest is passionate, lively and spontaneous and organisers promise you a soul-stirring experience fuelled by the best jazz, gospel, cajun blues, R&B, funk and Caribbean music. The Jazz Fest experience typifies both the highs and lows of the jazz experience from intimate blues performed in tiny smoke dimmed bars to big band parades and out door performances. Jazz Fest’s first line up of performers in 1970 included Duke Ellington, Fats Domino, The Olympia Brass Band and Clifton Chenier but the festival only attracted an audience of around 350, about half of the number of musicians playing in the event. By 2001 audience numbers topped 650,000, as Jazz Fest celebrated Louis Armstrong’s centenary. Performers from all over the world are drawn to the festival as an opportunity to collaborate with other big names so lucky audiences often get to see some one off impromptu jams featuring jazz legends. Festival goers will also be able to immerse themselves in the food and culture of jazz in the markets and food stalls. Jazz Fest coincides with the New Orleans Heritage Festival because in its first year famous local jazz legend, Mahalia Jackson, joined in with a big band marching as part of the Heritage parade for an impromptu but by all accounts spine tingling performance. Proving how important jazz is to the heritage and identity of New Orleans.
Review by Photo by flickr user smata2 |
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Puccini Festival, Torre del LagoFestivals in Leghorn, Italy Summertime dusk, and a beautiful Italian lake, complete with picture perfect villages flickering with lights, becomes the large as life backdrop for the romance, colour and drama of Puccini’s operas. An outdoor theatre has been built on this spot, with a view over the Massaciuccoli Lake almost annually since 1930, and the permanent theatre, built in 1966 now attracts crowds of up to 40,000 to see Puccini’s best loved works, usually including a selection from Madame Butterfly, Tosca, Turandot and La Bohème. Other events relating to Puccini and his poetic stories are held around the lake to coincide with the festival, which has also become the place to premiere new stagings of Puccini’s works and for beloved and renowned opera artists to debut and farewell in major roles. Puccini lived and worked in a villa, now the Villa Museum Puccini, a few hundred metres from the amphitheatre and his bones are interred in a chapel on the grounds so this view was the backdrop for the conception of many of his works. The town of his birth, Lucca, is nearby as are Pisa and the Italian Riviera. One of the most popular events on the opera calendar, book your tickets in advance by emailing ticketoffice@puccinifestival.it.
Review by Photo by flickr user MShades |
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Molde International Jazz FestivalFestivals in Vestlandet, Norway The likes of Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, James Brown, and even Ray Charles have all performed at Norway’s most famous jazz festival. Know as MoldeJazz, it draws in celebrities and jazz enthusiasts from all over the world. It has been the source of lively head-bobbing and relaxed finger-snapping for a week every July since its creation in 1961.
Review by Photo by flickr user Stig Ove Voll |
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Paris Fete de la MusiqueFestivals in Paris, France France was the first country to promote this, a single night of limitless music on the eve of the summer solstice, 21st June. Sound restrictions are lifted for the night and hundreds of amateur talents line the streets to perform for the public in a truly bewitching musical dedication to the start of summer.
Professional concerts of an endless variety of musical genres are given throughout the night in halls, churches and theatres and attendance is largely free, so there is a dizzyingly full night’s entertainment to be had simply from wandering the wide streets in the dark with the rest of the city, crepe in hand, amongst the blossom-packed trees.
Review by Photo by flickr user <Benoît> |
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Nice Jazz FestivalFestivals in Nice, France Towards the end of July, the deliciously warm, elegant Riviera city of Nice spends a week basking in the glow of the world's best-loved jazz music, performed throughout the day by local and international artists amongst the sunny olive groves and in the impressive Roman amphitheatre. The evening performances are given by internationally renowned jazz artists and last well into the Mediterranean nights, and the event's informal atmosphere allows visitors to explore markets, food stalls and impromptu street performances as well as to hear some of the best live jazz on earth.
Review by Photo by flickr user Thunder Thumbs |
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The Big Day OutFestivals in Sydney, Australia The Big Day Out (BDO) rocks stadiums of people all around Australia and New Zealand with its mix of big international headliners and local acts. Multiple gigs take place all at once on stages of varying sizes all around the grounds, so you have to know what you HAVE to see to make sure you’re in the right place at the right time. The really organised arrive when the festival opens at nine or ten in the morning and have their day planned out until the 1am finish. There’s a mix of music from rock to punk to electronica to hip hop depending on which artists have been big that year. The dance music gigs are hosted by the ‘Boiler Room’, a circus style tent to create a rave style ambiance. The first Big Day Out was held in Sydney in 1992, and the festival now tours to Auckland, the Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Recent BDO’s have attracted between 40,000 and 55,000 people per venue.
Review by Photo by flickr user Michael_Spencer |
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Verdi Festival, ParmaFestivals in Parma, Italy Verdi’s passionately romantic music is loved so passionately that the Verdi festival has spread from Parma to include Parma and surrounds: Modena, Reggio and Emilia. The strains of his dramatic melodies were born against Parma’s backdrop of churches and cobbled streets surrounding the Teatro Regio which now hosts the main events. Concerts and operas happen daily, and each day of the programme includes one of his crowd pleasing favourites: could be ‘Rigoletto‘, ‘La Traviata’, ‘Macbeth’, ‘Don Carlo’, ‘Falstaff’ or ‘Aida’, as well as his lesser known works and glorious Requiem performed by the cream of the world’s performers. You couldn’t help but fall in love with opera amongst this kind of enthusiasm for the art and the swoon-inducing heights and soars of Verdi’s music (that’s before the dramatically heaving bosoms and handsome lovers are taken into account.). Love, death, love, death, love death and passion is all its glory. This festival will make you feel something. Verdi himself was born just out of Parma in Busseto, which pilgrims will want to visit both for the many memorials (the man himself was very well loved.), and The Teatro Verdi, Museo Civico and Villa Verdi.
Review by Photo by flickr user ho visto nina volare |
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The Montreal International Jazz FestivalFestivals in Montreal, Canada One of the world's biggest live music events, the Montreal International Jazz festival welcomes more than 2,500 top musicians from all over the world to perform jazz, soul, funk, electro, folk and traditional music in more than 150 different indoor shows and around 350 free outdoor events. Spanning eleven days and nights of the balmy Montreal summer, the world's biggest jazz festival entertains more than two million people, closing the centre of the city to allow extra audience space for the free outdoor concerts.
Review by Photo by flickr user moriza |
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North Sea Jazz FestivalFestivals in Rotterdam, Netherlands Sink into three heavenly days of swing, fusion, gospel, funk, blues, soul, latin, electro, big band and every other kind of jazz imaginable at the largest jazz festival on the planet during the middle weekend of July every year. The grand scale of the festival has necessitated its recent move from The Hague to the Ahoy arena in Rotterdam, and it is surrounded by a children's jazz event, the North Sea Jazz Heats, the Midsummer Jazz Gala and a considerable number of free concerts.
Review by Photo by flickr user @Siebe! |
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Berlin Love ParadeFestivals in Berlin, Germany Over a million attendees follow this energetic parade of club DJs’ and dancers’ floats through the centre of Berlin and abandon themselves to the chest-vibratingly loud dance, trance, techno and house music. The majority dress in risqué accordance with the festival’s title theme and inhibitions are discarded with vigour at every turn. Peace, love and international friendship were celebrated through the appreciation of music at this festival for the first time in 1989, in anticipation of the re-unification of Germany and a new, positive Europe. It occurs on the second or third weekend in July (whichever is closest to the middle of the month), and lasts throughout Saturday and into the evening, culminating in a string of performances from the world’s top Djs.
Review by Photo by flickr user ksfoto |
