Exclusive: A second UK summer festival bites the dust

We hear that another of Britain’s leading music festivals is all but lost. The Cheltenham Music Festival, whose 1,000+ run of premieres began with Britten’s Four Sea Interludes in 1945, shed its last staff member yesterday when Michael Duffy’s job was downgraded to part-time and his 2024 programme slashed to shreds.

What remains is unrecognisable from the fortnight-long destination of 70+ events directed in recent decades by Michael Berkeley, Martyn Brabbins, Meurig Bowen and, for one year in 2018, Alison Balsom. Still maintained for next summer is some music by Gustav Holst, who grew up in Cheltenham and whose 150th birthday falls in 2024. Holst would have recoiled at this miserable turn of events.

The issue seems to be that Cheltenham Music Festival has been eclipsed by its younger siblings, the Cheltenham Literature, Jazz and Science Festivals. They have commercial, mass-market modelswith celebrities flogging their books to huge audiences or people flocking to BBC Radio 2-friendly pop acts in the name of ‘jazz’. Where once the Music Festival’s artistic identity was protected by senior trustees, a newer generation of decision-makers just hasn’t cared enough. So Cheltenham Music joins Dartington tragically on the scrapheap.