Could arts festival lure Cullum to city?
17/12/2007
Internationally renowned artists including Jamie Cullum and Rufus Wainwright are in talks to appear at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival as organisers step up the scale of the annual event.
In the past three years the popular arts celebration has grown dramatically and organisers are setting their sights on taking the festival to the next level.
Jonathan Holloway, festival director, said the intention now is to make the event the international performing arts festival for the East of England and lure an even higher calibre of artist to the 16-day festival.
Mr Holloway said: “We want to increase significantly the scale of what we do, making the festival the time when artists of the calibre of Ute Lemper, Laurie Anderson, Robert Lepage, Leif Ove Andsnes, Jamie Cullum, Royal de Luxe and Rufus Wainwright come to the region.
“We are talking to those people now about coming here, probably not all for next year, but maybe for 2009 and 2010. What we want is for Norwich to be the other date in the UK which artists do when they do, say five nights in London as part of their tour.
“We feel we have come on so much in the past three years that we have got to the point we should be at and now we want to step up another level.
“I feel we are really on the cusp of great things in Norwich. There is a real vibrancy about the place. It is a beautiful city, has a real sense of place and we want to bring people who live here a festival they deserve.”
The festival, which is the oldest single-city festival in the country, dating back to 1772, trebled its audiences over the past three years - with 40,000 people attending this May's event.
This year's festival included highlights such as a fire and drumming spectacular from Basque group Deabru Beltzak the Philharmonia Orchestra, Endellion String Quartet and the London Mozart Players.
It also marked the launch of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival for Children and a new £5 ticket scheme for people aged under 26.
Mr Holloway said frantic work was going on at the festival's offices in Tombland to get the programme ready for next year's festival, which will run from May 2 until May 17.
The festival and principal sponsor 'one' railway were last month named the inaugural winners of the Essex and Suffolk Water Arts and Business East Sustainability Award for 2008, in recognition of one railway's 17-year sponsorship of the festival.
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Who would you like to see performing at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival next year and why? Write to Evening News Letters, Prospect House, Rouen Road, Norwich, NR1 1RE or email eveningnewsletters@archant.co.uk
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