We are delighted to finally share with you what we have planned for this year’s Festival. Our inspiration this year is "The Homeland", what it means, how it is celebrated; looking through composers' relationships with their roots, how they take inspiration from them, either by going straight to the source, or by nostalgically diving in to their distant but strong memories. An obvious place to start was Czech composers, so we have a tasty "Czech Sandwich" in store for you, starting and finishing the Festival with 2 programmes entirely of Czech music –we also celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Smetana, opening the Festival with his “From the Homeland”. The 2024 Festival travels around other parts of the world too, from India to Scotland with “Postcards from Home”, Australia to America with “Towards the New World”, Italy with “Viva Verdi”, and many others. We are very grateful to all the artists that will be joining us this year, some that have been with us since the very start, like Kati Debretzeni, Fran Hills, Miguel Ángel Villeda Cerón and Sol Grimshaw. There will be some new faces too, such as Su-a Lee, Sky Ingram, Peter Rose, Jacqueline Shave and Kuljit Bhamra, to name a few. We are thrilled to be returning to some wonderful venues and adding a few more, like The Green in Clerkenwell for our first "Coffee Concert with Haydn", and the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, where we will begin our "Walking Concert through the Angel". Have a browse through our programme: we hope you will enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed creating it! Tickets are now on sale and as usual, we have some great deals, free tickets for young people (and there were early bird discounts until May!) As usual, Alison Gardiner will be our live sketcher during most events and you will be able to see the results after the festival, at her exhibition in After Noah's Gallery 121 - The exhibition will take place between 2 to 11 August.
We look forward to seeing you in July. Joana and Martin
Born out of the local garden concerts we organised after lockdown in the summer of 2020, the Islington Festival aims to recreate the community spirit that inspired us during that time and bring people together to experience high-quality live music and art, in different venues throughout the Borough of Islington.
