Whittington Music Festival kicks off thanks to support from community and musicians
A Shropshire music festival has kicked off with a full programme of events, after overcoming a huge financial challenge that threatened it going ahead at all.
Fears were raised in December that the 2022 edition of the Whittington Music Festival might have been its last, after a decision was made by the Arts Council not to provide £15,000 in grant funding for 2023.
But in just three weeks, more than £11,000 of the £15,000 needed to finance the 2023 festival was raised by supporters in the community.
Rob Greaves, chairman of the festival, said: "The funding crisis was in December but was overcome by the generosity of our supporters and musicians, some of whom agreed to play without a fee.
"The exciting news is that our star performer, baritone Roderick Williams, who sang at the Coronation on May 6, is performing twice, on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.
"The Sunday concert is sold out but there are plenty of tickets for Saturday."
Now, Whittington Music Festival has launched its long weekend of events, including concerts and workshops, starting with 'Take Five' taking place at 7.30pm on Wednesday evening.
This year's programme includes a collaboration with Kinokulture with two original short films and live music by Katherine Hunka and David Shaw and a Friday concert 'Bach to Bollywood: a night at the movies', featuring a variety of classical and non-classical music used for film soundtracks.
The festival aims to present world-class music to people living in northwest Shropshire and welcomes music lovers of all ages to attend.
It was established in 2013 as an annual chamber music festival held in St John the Baptist Church in Whittington.
The church has wonderful acoustics so is a perfect venue for concerts, and the warm welcome shown by the community has meant that the musicians are keen to return year after year.
In recent years artistic director Sophia Rahman has diversified the repertoire to include jazz and song to appeal to a wider audience.
She even studies school exam syllabuses to tailor parts of the programme to be useful for GCSE and A Level Music students.
The festival also has an outreach programme, where artists work with young musicians from local secondary schools and with primary school children from the MusicMOB charity.
To check out the full programme for 2023, visit whittingtonmusicfestival.org.uk.
