There’s a new (free!) Music Festival event in September.

All teachers, with their pupils along with parents and children are warmly invited to a Piano Afternoon at Trinity Methodist Church on Saturday 9th September.

There will be a series of workshops/masterclasses featuring performers from the 2023 Festival that will highlight the features of our new 2024 piano syllabus.

But it’s not just the workshops!

You will be the first to get your hands on this year’s new syllabus – and can sit back and enjoy a recital by the rising star, Josh Luxon-Robinson.
Josh has grown up through the classes at the Skipton Music Festival and is now reaching towards a professional career at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

(Not only that – there’s reputed to be tea and cake on offer as well!)

For more details, contact Kate Isaac on 07967 097394

Trinity Methodist Church is on Westmoreland Street in Skipton (BD23 2EA) and the afternoon will start at 2:30pm – and entry is free!

We have the wording of some of the classes slightly wrong…

Just to be clear…  All of the non-competitive classes (Classes 521 – 532) are open to solo performers as well as to duets/trios or small ensembles.

The price structure is set to reflect these choices in the appropriate age range.

The date for the 2023 Festival is getting nearer and nearer…

The Syllabus is now published.
You’ll find that here

The online booking system is ready and available – entries are beginning to come in!

The deadline is 14th January
– and there’s a warning!
We’ll be quite fierce with the deadline!  If you are late, there’s a good chance that your entry will be refused.

Keep watching this space…

As they almost used to say, That was a Week, That Was!

We had an amazing week of performance in Christ Church

… it was crowned with a fabulous concert in the Town Hall.  That was only the third time that tickets have ever sold out since the hall was reopened.

Read all about it here

Ticket sales are forging ahead for our Centenary Concert
with Jess Gillam!

Jess will be playing alongside several of the emerging stars who will have been entertaining us during the week-long Festival in Christ Church, Skipton during the previous week.

Some tickets will be on sale in the Christ Church foyer during the Festival events but all online sales are being administered directly by Skipton Town Hall Box Office, where the event will be held.  To buy your ticket, please visit their box office site here.

The Festival Syllabus for our Centenary Year is now published and the booking system is live (though you cannot actually complete a booking before 31st October)

We look forward to seeing a bumper crop of entries in this, our Centenary Year…

We’ve just about got our beans in a row for 2022…

The first big news is that, with support from the Arts Council,
we have arranged for Jess Gillam to headline our Centenary Concert.

Jess is an internationally acclaimed saxophonist, broadcaster and presenter and she has agreed to come and play for us and to talk with our own young and rising stars who will be sharing the programme that night.

Jess has been involved with the Festival movement and is keen that festivals such as ours will survive and thrive.

Another headline for the week is that we have a new Official Accompanist – none other than our own Nicole Johnson!  Nicole has grown up with the Skipton Festival from her very early days and she is now established as a freelance pianist, vocal coach and musical director.  We are delighted to be able to welcome her back again!

Nicole is an accomplished accompanist – and fully appreciates the needs and pressures of our young performers!

The Centenary Festival will take place at Christ Church, Skipton from 7th – 12th March.
The Festival Concert will be in Skipton Town Hall on the evening of Sunday 13th March.

The syllabus is prepared!  You will find that here.  There is a limited numer of printed copies available – if you want one to be posted to you, read here.

Entries will close on 17th January.

We are proud to introduce a new competition for 2021.  As we were unable to hold the usual week’s Festival in March, we have developed a drawing and essay event for all children, from Primary School upwards.  They will be judged in four categories from KS 1 through to Year 10.

So get your pens, crayons, brushes, keyboards keypads dusted down and give it a go!
To give you a better chance of getting your work in, we’ve extended the deadline to the end of half term: 31st October but, as always, it’s best to get on with it now…

Details of the different categories are available in the DrawingandEssay document which you can download here.

Our Facebook page (at facebook.com/SkiptonMusicFestival) is filling up!

Online at the moment, there are some pen-portraits of our leavers this year.  Chris and Jacob are up there at the moment – there are more to come!

Scroll down a little…  You’ll come across some of the faces that lie behind the Festival.  Ever wondered what the Festival Office looks like?  Wonder no more…

It will come as no surprise…

Your Festival Committee met on 29th December to discuss the 2021 Festival.  With the gloomy news that day that COVID-19 cases had increased by a record number and with the near-certainty of new restrictions, it didn’t take us long to agree that plans to hold any sort of Festival in March are unrealistic.

With heavy hearts, we have cancelled the March 2021 Festival.

All is not gloom!  Along with the announcement that AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for use, we are encouraged to think that some form of new “normal” will begin to emerge.  We have plans for some exciting initiatives for 2021 and we are already planning for our Centenary Year in 2022

Watch this space!