Exclusive: A second UK summer festival bites the dust
NewsWe 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.
“downgraded to part-time”?
That’s not what the announcement says.
Nonetheless it is true that the post of Music Festival Head of Programming (the sole remaining Music Festival member of staff) was marked for redundancy and recast as a 0.4FTE/2 day per week position
This is all getting ridiculous now. Will anything be left soon? Can this decision be overturned in any way, or do we just accept the very sad state of things here? I’ve been going to the Music Festival for the past 15 years or so, and can’t think of a concert that hasn’t been absolutely packed out, and education engagement is phenomenal, so what’s going on? In fact, my first ever professional commissions came from Cheltenham over a two-year period, which directly led to the next and the next.. What opportunities will be left for the younger British composers coming up now? What shortsighted decision making.
Hannah, I fear you may be painting on overly-rosy picture. The (ever-smaller) number of orchestral concerts do sell well, but the chamber concerts in particular have been incredibly poorly attended post-COVID. That is, I realise, not a problem unique to the Cheltenham Festival.
The appointment of Alison Balsom was a disaster too – she simply wasn’t interested in the business of running a festival and (crucially) engaging with long-term donors.
On top of this, funding is ever-tighter, and the venues around Cheltenham itself are being put under ever-greater pressure to make ends meet without Council assistance.
Ann W’s comment below about the orchestral season (outside the Festival) reflects this; essentially the Cheltenham Trust, which is now in charge of the Town Hall, Pittville Pump Room, Wilson Gallery and Leisure Centre [note: plainly these things don’t belong under one roof!], was set up with a woefully inadequate funding settlement that means they have no room to subsidise anything at all and have been told in no uncertain terms by the Council that they won’t get bailed out.
Post-COVID, and with aging audiences that struggle with online marketing, this has created a perfect storm for classical music in that it needs just about every fan in the area to turn up to create sufficient occupancy (90%+ I’d guess) to cover the costs of an orchestral concert.
Why the photo of The Three Choirs Festival to accompany an article about The Cheltenham Festival?
Hi Simon, You’ve correctly identified one of our Three Choirs venues (Gloucester Cathedral) but this is a picture from the close of the 2022 Cheltenham Music Festival, when they staged Mahler 8. Our seating and staging configuration is significantly different.
I think that we are drifting into a new Dark Age. This is, perhaps, the fruits of our failure to educate the children of the 21st century about the things that REALLY matter.
This is terrible news. I heard about it earlier today. Having been a supporter of the Festival for over 50 years starting when John Manduell was the director I am in despair. Michael Duffy had planned an excellent programme for 2024 and he has been badly treated. The barbarians are in charge. It is not only the music festival that is suffering. The winter orchestral concerts a feature of Cheltenham’s cultural life for 70 years or more during which we have enjoyed performances by some of the UK ‘s leading orchestras have been cancelled this year with no prospect for the future. As for the Literary festival it may be a commercial success but only because nowadays it is no more than a book fair promoting the works of TV celebrities and cooks and their like. I have long given up on it. The cultural outlook here is bleak.
Ann W – see comment above. I agree with you – but this is what happens when local government is cut so badly by central government diktat that arts functions end up outsourced with a structure and funding arrangement that is doomed from the start. And that’s before COVID intervened.
The illustration shows a Three Choirs Festival concert in Gloucester Cathedral!
Hi Garry, See my reply Simom above – it’s a TCF venue but not a TCF event!
Living near Cheltenham & visiting the music festival my observations are as follows 1. Website & Booking are not good plus booking fee (just include in price as it makes to more you book more expensive!) There is no incentive to becoming a member as nothing is sold out. Also no clear theme ie new music – young artists – choral – Early Music. Needs clear direction and enthusiasm!
The suggestion that the festival is closing because younger people are involved is nonsense. I have worked for lots of charities where incompetent older people who know nothing about how an organisation needs to be properly managed and run, have driven it into the ground. Age is irrelevant. You’re right it’s less commercial and as arts funding has been decimated that will make it less viable to run. An octogenarian trustee who just loves classical music isn’t going to save it in this landscape.
I do not think senior trustees was necessarily referring to their age. It was a change of direction around the time that Michael Berkeley left when the management of all four festivals were combined with the down grading of individual directors.
The premieres of Tippett at the Cheltenham Festival by Paul Crossley remain in my mind. Meurig Bowen and his wife wrote curious book about music for children which has happily disappeared.
Thanks Martin! Glad you enjoyed our book – though quite irrelevant in the context of this desperate CMF story. FYI, the book was as it was – ‘curious’ – because it was commissioned to be that way as the sequel to an art book. The reason it’s disappeared, to your obvious delight, is not because no one wanted to read it (actually, it sold 20,000 copies around the world and was translated into several languages), but because the website we created for children to explore more was hacked by extortionists, and the publishers declined to pay the ransom to remove the porn they’d put on instead. So the book was pulped worldwide. Happy now?
Interesting absence of comments on this. Why is that?
It was always scheduled at the wrong time for us, being in that cheaper period for holidays before state schools broke up, so we were usually away. The most appealing events were always sold out really quickly, too, so we usually missed out, and other events seemed well sold even when a bit painfully priced, which does make it surprising that the festival has been abandoned. It is disappointing.
I would like to know who makes these decisions and the reasons why they are made.
Classic FM deal… shoulda woulda coulda!