Harrogate International Festival Highlights, July 2018
The countdown is on... Harrogate International Festival presents its month-long summer extravaganza in venues and gardens across the beautiful Spa town.
On Friday June 29, the Spiegeltent in Crescent Gardens kicks off with a week-long celebration of club classics, soul, jazz, and burlesque. Acts include The Gypsy Queens, Binker & Moses and DJ Graeme Park.
Built of wood, mirrors, canvas, leaded glass, velvet and brocade, the pop-up venue has taken on legendary proportions with its appearance marking the start of the town’s festival.
The Spiegeltent will also feature a Children’s Festival with music, storytelling and science on Saturday 30 June to Sunday 1 July. Authors include the award-winning Hilary Robinson. For action, History’s Maid Sword School teaches those all-important skills to slay a dragon. Professor Boffin hosts an interactive Fun Science Show with a few fireballs, explosions, whooshes and smoke.
The Luminarium – a giant interactive art installation – will transform Harrogate's famous Stray from 12 to 15 July. The epic walk-in inflatable sculpture designed by Alan Parkinson of Architects of Air is half the size of a football pitch. It offers a dazzling maze of winding paths and soaring domes in a monument to the beauty of light and colour.
Music Festival highlights include MOBO-winner Laura Mvula, one of Britain’s most distinctive musical talents, who is performing at the beautiful Royal Hall.
Also performing will be the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Sir Mark Elder CBE, celebrating the 125th anniversary of Tchaikovsky and Britain’s favourite clarinettist, Emma Johnson, will celebrate the centennial of Leonard Bernstein, classics including music from West Side Story.
Oddsocks perform their take on Shakespeare in RHS Harlow Carr Gardens and for the first time the festival will host a unique Long Table dinner with acclaimed chef, Stephanie Moon, as festival go-ers will dine under the stars in Harrogate’s Valley Gardens famed Victorian colonnade.
Harrogate International Festivals, which won the Arts Festival of the Year Award at the Northern Soul Awards 2017, also delivers its world-renowned Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (July 19-22), with giants of the genre Lee Child, Val McDermid and John Grisham among the special guests at Agatha Christie's old haunt, The Old Swan Hotel.
Tickets for all events: Box Office: 01423 562 303 harrogateinternationalfestivals.com