Rye Arts Festival brings in musicians from all around the world and this year the classical programme is truly global.
On September 18, St Mary’s Church will host Trio Opal. This young group of international musicians – Eriko Nagayama (violin), Joel Siepmann (cello) and Yi-Shing Cheng (piano) – met while studying at the Royal Academy of Music and decided to play together. Individually and collectively they have won a host of prizes, and they are playing a series of concerts in England and France in 2019, so Rye is lucky to be able to secure them.
On Sunday September 22, also at St Mary’s Church in Rye, the Festival introduces Tangram – a collective that creates and plays the new music from the Chinese diaspora. Led by Alex Ho, Reylon Yount, Beibei Wang and Daniel Shao, Tangram was founded in January of this year. And the collective, which has a variety of backgrounds, weaves a path between European classical and Chinese music, including traditional and newly written work.
Tangram will be playing a concert at 7:30pm but this is preceded by a free workshop at 5:30pm for 45 minutes, allowing young and old to come along and have a go on their instruments.
And on September 24 a real treat is in store at Winchelsea. The Norwegian cellist Ernst-Simon Glaser, who was schooled in England, but who is now principal cellist for the Gothenburg Orchestra in Sweden, will be playing a remarkable concert.
Ernst-Simon will be playing three brand new pieces written specially for him by three Norwegian composers, and these will be performed with the three Bach cello pieces which directly inspired the new works. This world premiere is not to be missed.
Tickets for these concerts (and other selected events) are on sale on the Arts Festival website.
Image Credits: Rye Arts Festival , Linxi Li .