On An Overgrown Path

Contemporary music is flourishing in Aldeburgh. Thomas Adès is the Festival's artistic director, innovative programming is pulling in new audiences, traditional musical boundaries are disappearing, and an inspirational £14m ($28m) creative campus will make new music available to future generations. Teamwork has played a vital role, but much of the credit for this success must go to Aldeburgh Music's chief executive Jonathan Reekie, who came to Suffolk in 1998 from Almeida Opera . The photo above shows Jonathan (left) talking to Bob Shingleton at Snape during this exclusive interview for On An Overgrown Path : BS - What is 'Aldeburgh Music', and what is its remit? JR - Aldeburgh Music was founded by the composer Benjamin Britten and singer Peter Pears in 1948, when they set up a Festival based in their home town of Aldeburgh . It’s remit draws on the original principles they established. These were to nurture talent by mixing established musical stars with emer...

An article in the Telegraph questions whether Pierre-Laurent Aimard is the right man to run the Aldeburgh Festival . Michael White's thrust that we should "leave running English music festivals to English music-lovers" is plainly wrong, but the underlying question as to whether all is well at Aldeburgh is valid. Regular readers will know Snape Maltings is my local hall . I spend more time there than in any other venue and have written more about music at Aldeburgh than any subject over the last seven years. My experience is that truly exciting and innovative things are happening at Aldeburgh; but increasingly they are happening outside the Festival period. Over the last twelve months three of my most intense musical experiences have been at Snape, the Aldeburgh Young Musicians performance of Louis Andriessen's Workers Union , John Cage's Song Books with Exaudi (see photo above), and the Suffolk Youth Orchestra's interpretation of Rachmaninov's Second Sym...

Roger Wright's recently announced move from the BBC to Aldeburgh has been described elsewhere as a " bombshell " and " surprising "; but personally I would describe it as another predictable step in the remorseless suburbanization of classical music . Roger Wright has not left the BBC: he has been moved sideways by the music establishment to a "safe house" at Aldeburgh. As has previously been pointed out here , the chairman of Aldeburgh Music council Simon Robey is also chairman of the Royal Opera House , while Aldeburgh Music president Lord Dennis Stevenson of Coddenham is a director of Glyndebourne productions as well as listing consultancy to Universal Music in his parliamentary declaration of interests . Their colleague Laura Wade-Gery sits on both the Aldeburgh Music council and the Royal Opera House board of trustees, another Aldeburgh Music council member David Robbie is a former non-executive director of the BBC , and the Barbican Arts Cen...

In today's Guardian Nicholas Kenyon speculatively reviews Saturday's Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment concert at the Royal Festival Hall. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about BBC Proms Director Kenyons' Hesse Lecture at the Aldeburgh Festival , and today I received this email: Hesse Lecture 2007 - Sorry you felt the need to speculatively review this in advance….how odd. As you've written a great deal of interest about the Proms in recent seasons I thought you might like to see the real thing. A shorter version will be in The Guardian tomorrow I believe - Nicholas Kenyon I'd hate to be thought odd. So here, scooping the Guardian, is the attachment: Metropolitan, micropolitan, cosmopolitan: the BBC Proms, the Aldeburgh Festival, and the future - given in the Jubilee Hall on Tuesday 19 June 2007 during the 60th Aldeburgh Festival by Nicholas Kenyon . It’s not given to everyone to invent a word, but you’ll notice that one of the three words in my title is inv...

Swamped by the final echoes of the Britten centenary celebrations was the news that the chief executive of Aldeburgh Music for the past sixteen years Jonathan Reekie is leaving in March. Over the years On An Overgrown Path has enthused about many of the projects that Jonathan has headed, and the photo above was taken when I interviewed him for a 2007 post . Although Jonathan's highest profile project was this year's Britten centenary culminating in Grimes on the Beach - "a triumph against the odds" - his most lasting legacy will be the new performance spaces at Snape which he masterminded. These new spaces, with the Britten Studio as the jewel in the crown , exhibit an acoustic excellence and environmental sensitivity which Benjamin Britten would most definitely have approved of. New music has been passionately promoted by Jonathan, with the highlights including the Faster than Sound presentations at RAF Bentwater and in the Britten Studio , Chris Watson...

Aldeburgh has a long association with both contemporary and electronic music and my header photo was taken at Aldeburgh Music's 2007 Faster then sound festival . On November 6th Aldeburgh explored a new path with a one day TEDx conference featuring a slew of speakers and musicians from that crucially important area where classical meets contemporary meets electronic meets rock music. TED stands for 'Technology Electronics & Design' and is the brand of the privately owned not-for-profit Sapling Foundation. Its main activities are networking conferences dedicated to "ideas worth spreading". The TED movement originated in Silicon Valley, California and its events have been held in Monterey, Long Beach, Palm Springs and international locations. Central to the conference format is a strictly enforced 18 minute duration for presentations and speakers have included Bill Clinton, Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, Google founders ...

Just received - a press release announcing that Pierre-Laurent Aimard (photo above) will succeed Thomas Adès as Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival for three years with effect from 2009. As the Independent commented following his BBC Prom earlier this year: " At 50 , the French pianist-conductor still has the eager simplicity that induced Messiaen to make him his protégé at 12, and the luminous brilliance that persuaded Boulez to install him at 19 as resident pianist for his brand-new Ensemble InterContemporain . . . .” Pierre-Laurent Aimard explained: “It was a big surprise to receive Jonathan Reekie's proposal to become Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival. It was only after long reflection that I realised it was the right and possibly natural progression for me in terms of musical challenge and engagement. I love the exploration of musical confrontations and the encounter with various creators and performing partners - embracing the literature of differ...