After two decidedly different and unusual festivals due to Covid and Covid restrictions, the Edington Music Festival returns on Sunday August 21^st for its official 65^th outing…

The festival will run for its usual eight days – Sunday 21st to Sunday 28^th August, with four services a day, three choirs of top-flight singers under three of the country’s leading choral directors, all under the direction of a new Festival Director, Robert Quinney, Director of the Choir at New College Oxford (and former Festival Organist and Director of the Nave Choir.)

Robert has themed the music for this special festival under the heading “Creation and Recreation”, a nod both to its re-emergence and to its capacity for promoting relaxation and fulfilment. 

The week will follow the traditional form starting each day with Matins (plainchant), followed by Eucharist, then Evensong and ending with Compline by candlelight, also plainchant.  Wednesday 24^th will be both the return of the BBC recording, (to be broadcast at a later date), and the Festival Supper in the evening; the Friday evening service will be a Requiem Mass (by Michael Haydn, younger brother of Joseph), and the week will also include Vaughan Williams’ ‘Mass in G Minor’, Copland’s ‘In the beginning’, and Dove’s ‘Seek him that maketh the Seven Stars’.

Leaflets containing the whole programme and other information  will be distributed from the end of June; the full music programme is already available on  the website, www.edingtonfestival.org.  The festival would like to extend huge thanks to everyone who has offered to host singers and other festival participants.