Wanstead’s May Music Festival returns to St Mary’s, uniting the community with a vibrant mix of concerts, guest performers and a joyful singalong celebration. Festival director Alison Wells reports
This year’s May Music Festival at St Mary’s is our fourth one. I love the way it brings the community of our parish and of our wider neighbourhood together. It’s so good to see people coming back each year and enjoying the concerts we put on. Thank you for supporting us, and I hope you will be with us again this year.
I’m also very grateful to our sponsors, who have supported us this year too, investing in their local community. And, of course, very grateful to everyone who helps run this festival; it wouldn’t happen without you!
We have an exciting and varied programme this year, with performers coming from near and far (see the poster opposite for a full timetable of events). Saturday will be an informal day with a short piano recital by Forest Gate’s Lewis Kingsley Peart. Lewis will be introducing his recital of romantic piano miniatures by Schubert, Chopin, Sibelius and Grieg. This will be followed by an interval for food and drink, after which Wanstead’s very own Joe Walters, with Josh Warren – a duo called The Ageing Balladeer – will entertain us with their dreamy mix of voice, piano and violin with songs about getting older in a strange old world. The concert will be outside – weather permitting – and the bar will be open throughout.
Sunday is your chance to shine! We will be performing shortened versions of two of Gilbert and Sullivan’s famous and popular operettas: Trial by Jury and HMS Pinafore. We have a fabulous line-up of soloists for the main characters, and smaller parts are filled too. But we need a chorus. Members of the parish choir will form the basis of the chorus, but we’d love you to join in with us! Copies of the music will be provided on the day. If you’d like to sing them, you can come along to the rehearsal at 2pm, or you can just turn up and sing along at the performance, which will start at 6pm. It promises to be a lot of fun. So, all you G&S fans, roll up, dust off your vocal cords and come and join us.
Finally, Monday’s performers are Rune Medieval – an ensemble of young professionals who all specialise in music of the Middle Ages. They will be hotfooting it from Yorkshire, where they have a concert the previous evening. They have an enticing programme of music telling the stories of four saints of the period through music and words. You’ll see lots of instruments that we don’t see in the concert hall today.
Tickets are available for booking now, either for each individual event or as a season ticket, which represents very good value.
See you at the end of May!
The May Music Festival will run from 23 to 25 May. For more information and to book tickets, visit wnstd.com/may26
