Northern Aldborough Festival

This year, for the first time, Cause UK represented the Northern Aldborough Festival. A two-week festival, 16-25 June, 2022 saw its most ambitious programme in its 29-year history, with a…

This year, for the first time, Cause UK represented the Northern Aldborough Festival.

A two-week festival, 16-25 June, 2022 saw its most ambitious programme in its 29-year history, with a semi-staged in-house production of Handel’s Theodora.

Soprano Fflur Wynn photographed by Lorne Campbell

Performed in Aldborough’s picturesque 14th century St Andrew’s church, the 40-strong production saw a stellar line-up of soloists, chorus and orchestra under the baton of Baroque specialist, Julian Perkins. Theodora was played by soprano Fflur Wyn, and it was directed by Joe Austin, whose recent credits include Aida at Houston Grand Opera and Katya Kabanova at the Royal Opera House.

It received an incredible 5-star review, which you can read here.

A charity, the festival’s core mission is to bring exceptional music to new audiences, in intimate rural locations where it would not normally be heard.

Robert Ogden, Artistic Director of the festival who is also a counter tenor, said: “As a musician, running a festival, I am really passionate to break down barriers and aim to be innovative and artistically brave. The whole team at our small music charity are committed to the idea that you shouldn’t have to travel to London for this kind of world-class live experience.”

The line up also included the finest British bass of his era, Sir John Tomlinson, jazz icon Claire Martin, Blur’s Britpop rebel rock star turned cheesemaker, Alex James, and the hottest classical guitar player of the moment, Sean Shibe.

We were pleased to secure the festival national and regional coverage across print and digital.

Coverage highlights include a photo story in the Sunday Telegraph, being one of BBC Music

Magazine’s 51 best UK classical music festivals and summer operas taking place in 2022, with festival acts James Baillieu and Julian Bliss performing on BBC3’s In Tune to promote the event.

We also took the name of the festival around the world (literally!) with a piece in British Airway’s in-flight magazine High Life.

Cause UK interviewed and wrote features directly on the festival for the Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Living magazine and Harrogate Advertiser. It got local stories too in the Stray Ferret, Darlington and Stockton Times and a podcast with the festival director Robert Ogden on Your Harrogate.

Our evaluation tool, Coveragebook, which uses algorithms to calculate audience reach, said the 43 pieces of online coverage had an online readership of 795m.