Director of Worthy Farm event hoping to create ‘Glastonbury adventure’

The director of Glastonbury’s upcoming online music event has said he hopes it will “capture a bit of that Glastonbury spirit of the unknown”.

Grammy-nominated Paul Dugdale – who has worked on projects with Adele, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, the Rolling Stones, Sir Paul McCartney and more – was speaking ahead of acts including Coldplay, Damon Albarn, Haim, Idles, Jorja Smith, Kano, Michael Kiwanuka and Wolf Alice taking part in the livestreamed event titled Glastonbury presents Live at Worthy Farm.

It will feature performances from well-known sites around the farm, including the Stone Circle and Pyramid field, after the full festival was cancelled for a second consecutive year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Dugdale told the PA news agency: “We really wanted to make every performance bespoke to the artist. So what you will see on Saturday is a different cross section of approaches and locations.

“But I guess the overarching vision of it was to… just try and take people on a bit of a journey, as cheesy as that sounds. Glastonbury is an adventure, and you never quite know what’s around the corner and often the best parts of the festival are the parts you weren’t expecting, and that’s really fun.

“We start at seven… and we take people through the sunset and into the night as one continuous evening of filming. So it’s weird and wonderful, but hopefully captures a bit of that Glastonbury spirit of the unknown.”

Singer-songwriter George Ezra and Irish disco producer Roisin Murphy are also on the bill, while festival co-founder Michael Eavis, 85, will lead a spoken-word narration of the five-hour event with the help of PJ Harvey and Jarvis Cocker, plus Kate Tempest, George The Poet and Kurupt FM.

Wolf Alice will be the first act to perform at 7pm, followed by Kiwanuka, Ezra and Haim, with Coldplay performing at 9.05pm before Blur frontman Damon Albarn and Jorja Smith.

A special unannounced guest will take to the stage at 11.05pm before rapper Kano then DJ Honey Dijon featuring Murphy.

Mr Dugdale said: “We’ve got a really diverse range of different artists and different genres of music. So not everything might be for everyone, but it’s a musical journey and you should go with it. And I hope that with each artist that we’ve worked with, you bring their show, and so you’re honouring them and their music.”

Event organiser Emily Eavis said next year’s full Glastonbury Festival is “pretty much done”.

She told PA: “There’s still work going on with the line-up, but we have got a lot of artists on board for the next year. So we’re quite far down the road with that.”

The livestream is taking place on May 22, with encore screenings on May 23.

Tickets can be purchased at worthyfarm.live