While the public face of the Festival is very much about selling tickets at the moment, there’s plenty of activity behind the scenes to get ready for the Festival.
Producing nearly 50 events across 20 venues is no small task, and takes a team of people to get ready. While the permanent staff in the office is limited to just Jane and Ashley, at this time of year many familiar freelance staff come back to work on the Festival. This includes Milly and Alex working on Marketing and promotion, John and Mary looking after production needs and of course a team of loyal volunteers. They all work together to bring some of the world’s best music and musicians to Newbury.
There’s a lot that goes into the Festival and quite a journey from Mark researching artsts as Festival Director through to the opening notes of a concert. From venue liaison to tickets, to piano hire and alcohol licences it’s all part of the annual process. Perhaps one of the most complicated aspects is the technical schedule. While many concerts take place in the Corn Exchange, many others are across our Rural venues. This means that John and his team transform churches, private homes and auction houses into concert halls for the evening.
That can include arranging car parking and lighting, pianos and staging. It all has to happen in the right order though – the stage needs to be built before the piano arrives etc. We also end up trying to turn church vestry spaces into artist changing rooms. With some very careful planning, combined with years of experience the Festival is safely delivered each year, and we’re thankful to all the parts of the process that make it happen. Most importantly, we look forward to welcoming our audience to another series of wonderful concerts.
So, back to the bit of the Festival you can see at the moment – do look at our Festival Guide and choose which concert you might want to come to. Meanwhile the office will keep making more lists and hopefully ticking some of the tasks as complete before adding more!