Festival 2008

In 2008 the Rye Arts Festival had one of its most successful year’s to date. The Box Office broke all records and we strained to capacity the host venues. A brilliant recital by John Lill got us off to a wonderful start filling the 900 year old St. Mary’s church with the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Schumann and Brahms, so, the bar was set very high! A succession of performers over the next two weeks kept audiences spellbound. Baritone, Hakan Vramsmo and mezzo, Louise Poole accompanied by Andrew Smith on the piano ran through a repertoire ranging from Cole Porter to Purcell and Bizet in St. Thomas’ in Winchelsea; the Wihan Quartet and Martin Kasik played a selection from Dvorak, Smetana and Haydn; The London Harpsichord Ensemble took Vivaldi, Handel and Bach to All Saints church, in the local village of Iden; the youthful Greenwich Trio stepped in when we unfortunately lost a concert and showed why they would go on just a couple of months later to win one of the Classical Music world’s top awards; and we signed off with the marvellous Razumovsky Ensemble.

But our festival is not just about classical music. Amongst guest speakers we heard Kate Adie talk about life in the journalistic front line; Professor David King talk about how we should approach the vexed issue of global warming; Michael Holroyd on his fascinating biography of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving and their families and Anita Laskar-Wallfisch on surviving the Nazi death camps to become a world class musician.

The Pasadena Roof Orchestra delighted a packed audience as did the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, returning for their third appearance at the festival. Folk was represented by Peter Knight from down the road in Hastings with his band Gigspanner and the Hokum Hotshots brought their unique blend of music and Geordie bante to the Community Centre

Comedy is always an important element of the festival and this year we had laughs in abundance with Shappi Khorsandi, Lip Service from Manchester, and Paul Merton presenting an evening of his favourite silent movies.

There are probably more artists per square foot in this area than anywhere else in Britain and several exhibitions showed off their work. Professor Andrew Causey spoke about the troubled painter, Edward Burra sponsored by the Friends of the Rye Art Gallery.

This year we promoted children’s work, too and were thrilled to have Children’s laureate, Michael Rosen down for two of his extraordinary performances, part stand up comedy, part poetry. Children came from a number of local schools to Rye College to be hugely entertained by this very special performer.

Supported by our loyal audiences, Friends and Patrons 2008 was a bumper year but we are confident that in 2009 we can match the excitement so please bookmark this web page and watch out for developments.

Becoming a Friend of the Rye Arts Festival
If you would like to make an important and much appreciated contribution towards the success of the Festival join us as a Friend and benefit from priority booking, discounts and much more . . . to become a Friend download an Application Form and return to us.