Music

North Yorkshire’s only contemporary New Orleans-inspired brass band lead an evening of music that packs a powerful punch of relentless drums, rumbling tuba and wailing horns. The band’s repertoire ranges from a full-on set of party covers to thrilling jazz and New Orleans sets. New York Brass Band annually plays at Glastonbury, Notting Hill Carnival and Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.

Father Richard Williams’ film nights are renowned. Parish priest in Hay since 2001, he trained as a professional musician at Trinity College of Music, London, studying piano, organ and composition. In the late Georgian-Gothic setting of St Mary’s Church, Hay, he is performing a live accompaniment on the Bevington organ to the classic 1920 German silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer.

At a fairground, Dr Caligari has a somnambulist, Cesare, who can predict the future. When a young man visits him and asks how long he will live, the answer is until dawn…

Levellers bring their folk-rock energy to the Festival with an acoustic show featuring additional musicians performing reworkings of some of their finest compositions from We the Collective and recently released second volume Together All the Way.

Join novelist Aleksandar Hemon and musician Damir Imamović for an exciting cross-genre collaboration. Widely acclaimed as a masterpiece, Hemon’s latest novel The World and All That It Holds is an engrossing, moving epic taking readers from Sarajevo to Shanghai and across a century of tumultuous history. He is joined by fellow Sarajevan Damir Imamović, celebrated Sevdah artist (Sevdah is a form of ‘Bosnian blues’; it literally means ‘beautiful sadness’) who will perform from his new Smithsonian Folkways album, inspired by and forming a rich soundtrack to The World and All That It Holds. An unmissable hour of words and music.

Amy Green and Sam Wilson, virtuosic members of the award-winning musical group Riot Ensemble, perform a show that explores the possibilities of two nebulous and anarchic instruments: saxophone and percussion. Testing the full capabilities of both, this programme includes solo pieces that feature different saxophones, as well as a plethora of tuned and untuned percussion. Full details at haymusic.org.

Yearning for adventure, cellist-singer and environmental activist Smout embarked on a month-long odyssey to Iceland, travelling by boat via Orkney, Shetland and the Faroes. These experiences inspired her entrancing and transportive solo show Eyjar, the Old Norse word for ‘islands’. The show explores our connections to place, the different lenses through which we view the land, and what that means for our relationship with nature. Join Smout for an evening of visceral storytelling, bristling with atmosphere created with live-looped cello, haunting melodies and deeply felt lyrics that are never too far from the sea.

Grammy-winning songwriter, singer, and record producer Robinson traces the story of her nearly 40-year friendship and songwriting partnership with Leonard Cohen, giving glimpses of life behind the scenes, performing songs they wrote together and showing photographic imagery.

Enjoy an evening of dazzling entertainment from Black Mountains Burlesque. Five dancers bring a riot of colour to the Festival with a series of bedtime stories for grown-ups. Experience classic stories brought to life with wit, glamour and laughter, behold the spectacle and be blown away by the playful art of seductive tease…

Author and Leonard Cohen devotee Philippe Sands (East West Street, The Last Colony) speaks to renowned singer and writer Sharon Robinson, the most prolific co-writer of songs with Cohen. As well as being Cohen’s frequent writing collaborator, Robinson has written songs for a number of other artists including the Pointer Sisters, Aaron Neville, Brenda Russell, Diana Ross, Don Henley, Michael Bolton, Randy Crawford, Patti LaBelle, Roberta Flack, the Temptations and Bettye LaVette.

Musician and writer Nick Cave and journalist Seán O’Hagan discuss their book, Faith, Hope and Carnage. Drawing on more than 40 hours of conversations between Cave and O’Hagan, the book takes readers from Cave’s early childhood to the present day, through his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years, and examines questions of faith, art, music, freedom, grief and love. This is an inspiring and hopeful conversation, and a rare chance to hear directly from a creative visionary.

Visionary singer, cultural ambassador and epic storyteller Baaba Maal performs his definitive tracks and music from his latest album, Being. Born in Senegal, and growing up inspired by indigenous African music, American R&B, soul, jazz, reggae and blues, Maal defied expectation to become a musician. Through the 1970s and 1980s he developed a distinctive sound that fused traditional African instruments with an adventurous electronic approach. He has collaborated with artists including Mumford & Sons, and helped Ludwig Goransson create the sound of Marvel’s Afrofuturistic Black Panther films.

Presenting music for violin and viola duo by Mozart and his contemporaries Ignaz Pleyel, Michael Haydn and Franz Anton Hoffmeister, members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment perform on instruments from the period, tuning up for an evening of virtuosity. They will create the closest possible experience to what the original composers imagined and the first audiences heard.

Renowned around the world for its dynamic music making driven by curiosity, the Orchestra takes its name from the description commonly given to the scientific, cultural and political revolution in western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.

BBC Radio 3’s Lunchtime Concert series is presented by Sarah Walker and explores the music of Schubert and others. This second of four recitals broadcast during the Hay Festival week offers a selection of songs by Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, Wolf and Kashani, performed by Soraya Mafi (soprano) and Ian Tindale (piano).

Recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Please arrive in good time.

Former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and instrumentalist John Sampson join forces for a unique event of words and music. Duffy performs some of her much-loved poems as well as new work, interspersed with musical interludes by Sampson, a multi-instrumentalist who plays the trumpet, recorders and a plethora of early and obscure wind instruments such as the crumhorn, gemshorn, and cornettino. Duffy and Sampson have collaborated for 20 years, playing venues including Buckingham Palace.

Then Before is a sound installation devised by sound artist Wajid Yaseen. Poems are presented in a multi-speaker, immersive listening installation, realised and activated by narration, music, found-sound, foley and spatialisation – a form of ‘sound or sonic poetry’. Then Before uses a selection of poems by writers Alice Kemp (a poet informed by states of dream, disturbance, and subtle trance), Jack Underwood (curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and author of Happiness, A Year in the New Life), and Shamshad Khan (poet and resilience coach, author of Megalomaniac), sonified and with spatialisation by Yaseen.

Modus Arts have performed at the Arnolfini Bristol, ICA Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitechapel Gallery, Laban and the Freud Museum in London. Text–Sound–Art is a platform for exploring how poets and sound artists can work together to extend poetry into soundscape, and sound into wordscapes to create new meaning and enhance both disciplines.

Then Before is a sound installation devised by sound artist Wajid Yaseen. Poems are presented in a multi-speaker, immersive listening installation, realised and activated by narration, music, found-sound, foley and spatialisation – a form of ‘sound or sonic poetry’. Then Before uses a selection of poems by writers Alice Kemp (a poet informed by states of dream, disturbance, and subtle trance), Jack Underwood (curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and author of Happiness, A Year in the New Life), and Shamshad Khan (poet and resilience coach, author of Megalomaniac), sonified and with spatialisation by Yaseen.

Modus Arts have performed at the Arnolfini Bristol, ICA Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitechapel Gallery, Laban and the Freud Museum in London. Text–Sound–Art is a platform for exploring how poets and sound artists can work together to extend poetry into soundscape, and sound into wordscapes to create new meaning and enhance both disciplines.

Then Before is a sound installation devised by sound artist Wajid Yaseen. Poems are presented in a multi-speaker, immersive listening installation, realised and activated by narration, music, found-sound, foley and spatialisation – a form of ‘sound or sonic poetry’. Then Before uses a selection of poems by writers Alice Kemp (a poet informed by states of dream, disturbance, and subtle trance), Jack Underwood (curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and author of Happiness, A Year in the New Life), and Shamshad Khan (poet and resilience coach, author of Megalomaniac), sonified and with spatialisation by Yaseen.

Modus Arts have performed at the Arnolfini Bristol, ICA Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitechapel Gallery, Laban and the Freud Museum in London. Text–Sound–Art is a platform for exploring how poets and sound artists can work together to extend poetry into soundscape, and sound into wordscapes to create new meaning and enhance both disciplines.

Judi Jackson grew up in Virginia, USA, playing piano and singing in the church choir. At 16 she opened for Mavis Staples, and two years later, teamed with jazz fusionists Snarky Puppy. When she moved to London, she channelled Joni Mitchell, Sade and Erykah Badu into her EP Blame it on my Youth. She was voted Vocalist of the Year at the 2020 Jazz FM Awards. Last year she released her full-length debut album Grace. Jackson’s live show includes her own interpretations of songs from jazz greats Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald along with her original soul-infused music.

Then Before is a sound installation devised by sound artist Wajid Yaseen. Poems are presented in a multi-speaker, immersive listening installation, realised and activated by narration, music, found-sound, foley and spatialisation – a form of ‘sound or sonic poetry’. Then Before uses a selection of poems by writers Alice Kemp (a poet informed by states of dream, disturbance, and subtle trance), Jack Underwood (curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and author of Happiness, A Year in the New Life), and Shamshad Khan (poet and resilience coach, author of Megalomaniac), sonified and with spatialisation by Yaseen.

Modus Arts have performed at the Arnolfini Bristol, ICA Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitechapel Gallery, Laban and the Freud Museum in London. Text–Sound–Art is a platform for exploring how poets and sound artists can work together to extend poetry into soundscape, and sound into wordscapes to create new meaning and enhance both disciplines.

Music has long been part of Wales’ national brand, and The Art of Music describes the visualisation of Welsh music and musicians. Peter Lord and Rhian Davies present a discussion of the trope of Welsh musicality between the mid-16th century and the present. Incorporating images and music, they analyse not only the evolution of the national brand but its political and social implications, especially in relation to the notion of British identity. Lord is best known for his books and television programmes about the history of Welsh art. Davies is a leading advocate of Wales’ musical heritage and promotes Welsh culture internationally.