Northern Aldborough Festival

At Cause UK, it was a delight to support the Northern Aldborough Festival again this year.

Sunwook Kim Conductor and Pianist
Photo: Marco Borggreve

Now in its 29^th year, the Northern Aldborough Festival has become a leading fixture on the classical music calendar. A charity, its founding mission is to bring world-class talent to rural locations.

This year, the festival dedicated its opening concert to the memories of its former trustees, David Lovell, and Di Burton.

Di was a friend of Cause UK as Ann (our co-director), began her PR career with Di’s agency, Cicada, many years ago. She was dynamic, and kind, and a big advocate of the arts. She is missed.

The festival has built an enviable reputation for hosting performances, normally seen in leading metropolitan concert halls, in the beautiful rural village setting of Aldborough.

This year saw its usual world-class line-up of musicians, with BBC Young Musician Matilda Lloyd, Pianist Sunwook Kim, and The Armonico Consort to name a few, alongside a headline talk from historian, Lucy Worsley.

Hay Festival Portrait- Lucy Worsley

The festival also offers an important platform for new, young musicians.

This year it launched its inaugural New Voices Competition – a nationwide hunt for the best UK classical vocal talent, offering £7k cash prizes and performing opportunities for the winners. The competition had a distinguished judging panel, featuring one of Britain’s best-loved sopranos, Dame Felicity Lott.

Robert Ogden, artistic director at the Northern Aldborough Festival, said: “British classical music has had a series of hammer blows recently with devastating funding cuts. We hope that the New Voices Singing Competition will provide a welcome platform to support young classical singers to launch their careers.”

Building on our media work last year, Cause UK achieved over 100 pieces of online press coverage, with an estimated 1.02m views. Highlights include a profile of Robert Ogden in the Yorkshire Post and Stray Ferret, pieces in Yorkshire Life and Yorkshire Living magazines, Matilda Lloyd in Northern Soul, a pick in Gramophone’s Festival Guide 2023, and highlight in BBC Music Magazine; the New Voices Competition was also announced in Classical Online, and the semi-finalists profiled in a series of Q&A’s that ran in the Yorkshire Times.

Read all about the winners of the new classical voices competition 2023.