Rye Arts Festival has a mission to bring the best of talent to our town from the local area and the rest of Britain. It also takes pride in being truly international, bringing top talent from around the globe to Rye. And this year (September 13-29) is no exception, with musicians from Africa to America and writers from around the globe all coming to Rye to entertain and inform us.
For example, in what is termed the traditional and contemporary music programme (pretty much everything that isn’t classical), we have cast our nets across the pond and landed two top quality artistes – Le Rue and Ben Bedford.
Le Rue is a Cajun band named after its leader, the highly acclaimed fiddler Pierre Le Rue, who play zydeco – the closely related music of white and black inhabitants of Louisiana. Pierre was born in New Mexico and formed his band in San Francisco, a cultural melting pot which might explain the tinges of country and bluegrass infused into the Cajun sound. After a gap of a few years the band has recently reformed so grab your tickets for Saturday, September 21, when Rye Community Centre will be red hot as the sounds of the Louisiana swamp fill the sultry air of the town and the surrounding marshes. At this point it should be noted that while Piere is American born and bred, he has lived in the UK for a number of years.
Ben Bedford, however, was born in Illinois and still lives in the American Mid-West with his cat Darwin. A singer-songwriter and finger plucking guitarist, Ben is a troubadour who has been named one of the 50 most significant folk singers-songwriters of the last 50 years alongside Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. He came to Rye a few years ago and won over the audience with the quality of his playing and his genuine warmth and integrity. Check Ben out on Saturday, September 28 when he will be playing at Rye Community Centre.
Turning to classical music, the programme presents two wonderful young pianists from Kenya and Lithuania. Teddy Otieno is a student at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire who was discovered in Nairobi and mentored by the young British pianist Cordelia Williams. Cordelia was convinced she had discovered someone of rare talent. Teddy had taught himself to play the piano playing a dummy keyboard made of cardboard. Such is his talent he reached the final of 2024 The Piano on Channel 4, having been mentored by Lang Lang. Come and hear Teddy play a 40-minute concert followed by a Q&A with him to find out more about his life and love of music. The concert on Sunday, September 22 at St Mary’s Church in Rye is called ‘Harambee’, which means ‘all pull together’ and is the Kenyan national motto. Harambee!
And on Tuesday, September 24 also in St Mary’s Church, we welcome back the wonderful Gabriele Sutkute from Lithuania. Those who were in the audience last year were blown away by a quite staggering concert. “Amazing”, “wonderful” and “sensational” were some of the comments from the audience afterwards, and we have listened to their pleas of “Please bring Gabriele back next year!” We have done so, and this is genuinely a not-to-be-missed concert.
Helen Simonson is a novelist who is both international and local, a kind of Le Rue in reverse. Helen spent her teenage years near Rye which she counted as her home town, but she has lived in New York for a couple of decades or so and is flying back to talk about her new novel The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club – a timeless comedy of manners about a generation of young women in England at the time of looming war but with dreams about a boundless future. Helen has been to the festival before and is a warm, engaging speaker as well as generous listener to budding authors. Come and see her at the George Ballroom on Monday, September 23.
Nandini Das is an author and historian who was born 50 years ago in what was Calcutta, now Kolkata, and was educated in India. She is now professor of early modern literature and culture in the English faculty at the University of Oxford. She is a specialist in Shakespeare studies, Renaissance romance writing, early travel literature and encounters between different cultures. The latter is the theme of her book Courting India, which is a history of the colonial encounters during the period of British domination and dominion from first arriving in the sub-continent in the early 17th century. The book won the British Academy Book Prize 2023 and was also named as a Waterstones book of the year.
Last, but far from least, 2024 marks the centenary of George Gershwin writing Rhapsody in Blue and the festival is offering you the chance to come and hear the composer play his classic piece! How? you might ask, since he died in 1937. Well, Mike Boyd will be dusting down his Duo-Art repeating piano, which will play the paper piano roll that was cut as a faithful reproduction when Gershwin himself played the music. Come and hear Mike talk knowledgably and about pianolas, and listen to him bring Gershwin, Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton “live” to St Mary’s Church on Monday, September 23.
To find out more about these, and around 60 other events during the festival, go to www.ryeartsfestival.org.uk.
Image Credits: Kt Bruce , Rye Arts Festival , Nina Subin .