At the early stages of planning for the next Festival we must always think of the venues that we use. The places that we take the Festival to are such a part of the fortnight – there’s a great deal of thought that goes into the process of choosing where, when and who.
We have some of the most beautiful spaces available to us, and we’re lucky to be allowed to use them. It is always a pleasure to return to some of our “usual” haunts, but equally exciting to think about new venues that we might use.
There is of course the Corn Exchange in Newbury which is our central base – we take over the building for the Festival fortnight, and we’re very grateful to have such a wonderful venue available to us at the heart of what we do.
But what about the “outreach” events, we range from St.Mary’s Church in Kintbury that seats just 80 people to Douai Abbey where we can seat over 500 people. It’s a fine balancing act to juggle the venues availability, the suitability of the space for the performance, and of course the artist availability during the Festival.
Hopefully by the time we publish the draft programme we’ve managed to get most of those variables to align, and come up with another Two weeks of world-class music.