This year’s Festival took place over the weekend 4 – 6 March 2022. You can watch a recording of the Festival launch (March 2021) at https://youtu.be/o3J_5ZLEobs.
With 30+ events occurring throughout the UK and beyond, participants involved had opportunities to premiere commissioned works alongside professional players and take part in a range of workshops, developments and concerts. As a grass-roots expression of music making, the Festival provides opportunities for unique artistic experiences as widely as possible, opening a culture of musical participation in contemporary music making.
View all the events at this year’s Festival here.
Projects
Read about Listening Grounds, a major online project for the Festival.
Find out about my sounds, a free creative music project for 14-18 year old musicians, composers and sound explorers.
Commissions
This year’s Festival commissions were:
- Hooligans by Oliver Leith
- Outside Phrases Heloise Werner
- and the leaves still grow by Xia Leon Sloane
- Group Hug by Yshani Perinpanayagam
- Storyteller by Amy Bryce
- if you could just get the cobweb by Emily Ebdy
- What to Play and How to Play it by Simon Knighton
- I <3 You by Elischa Kaminer (work in progress)
- Departure by Atefeh Einali
The Festival also saw the launch of choral partsongs, a collection of twelve works for larger vocal groups by Paul Burnell, Alexander Campkin, Jürg Frey, Hollie Harding, Joel Järventausta, Hannah Kendall, Catherine Lamb, Janet Oates, Yshani Perinpanayagam, Shirley Thompson, Andrew Toovey and James Weeks. Find our more or order your copy here.
Previous Festivals
The 2020 Festival took place in 23 locations across the UK and Europe, involved over 60 partners and more than 70 new works were performed. Follow these links to see information about the 2020, 2018 and 2016 Festivals.
Funders
CoMA gratefully acknowledges funding support for the Festival commissions from Arts Council England, The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, PRS Foundation, Samuel Gardner Memorial Trust, RVW Trust and Youth Music.
We are part of the Keychange initiative encouraging festivals and music organisations to achieve a 50:50 gender balance by 2022.
We commit to Sound and Music’s Fair Access Principles, designed to act as a code of best practice for running successful, open and inclusive artist development programmes, competitions and awards for composers.
