Ilkley Literature Festival is inviting audiences to shuffle through a playlist of music events this October as it explores Beethoven to Britpop.
Erica Morris, Director of Ilkley Literature Festival, said:
"Music takes so many different forms, yet the power it has to transform our moods is universal. We’re looking forward to exploring a huge variety of musical expressions from Beethoven through to Britpop under the guidance of some extraordinary experts.”
In our modern age of call outs, cancellation, and scandals, the award-winning slam poet Vanessa Kisuule will discuss the moral conundrums that come with fandom.
In what promises to be a bracingly honest, witty, and lively discussion, Kisuule explores how, or if, we can hold famous figures to account while loving them at the same time and whether we can, or should, ever separate the art from the artist.
Richard Morton Jack discusses his book, Nick Drake, exploring the singular talent who passed almost unnoticed during his brief lifetime. Drake produced several albums that went on to sell in the millions in the decades after his death. Richard Morton Jack draws from new interviews with Drake’s family and exclusive access to deeply personal archive material to explore his enigmatic existence.
Classic FM presenter, bestselling author, and journalist John Suchet traces Beethoven’s footsteps from his early years in Bonn to his dying days in Vienna.
Drawing on his own life and career, Suchet takes us on a personal journey, discussing how Beethoven’s music has accompanied him through the best and worst of times and demonstrating the life-changing power of great music.
Kate Kennedy, Director of the Museum of Music History and Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, offers a homage to the cello. Audiences can discover the remarkable history of the cello and hear stories of four remarkable cellists and their experiences of persecution, dramatic escape, and misfortune.
The festival also presents a special evening with former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and her long-time collaborator, multi-instrumentalist John Sampson.
During this event, poetry and music unite as Sampson, who plays everything from the trumpet to the lesser-known crumhorn, provides a musical backdrop to Duffy's performances of her best-loved poems alongside selected modern and classic poems on the wonder of nature from her new anthology Earth Prayers.
Journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer will also explore the history of nineties Britpop, exploring the era’s key artists from Oasis and Blur to The Prodigy and Radiohead, transporting us back to the beating heart of the nineties.
Ilkley Literature Festival runs 4-20 October in venues across the town. Box office on 01943 816714 or book online: www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk
Headline acts include Kate Atkinson, Julian Clary, Susie Dent, Alan Hollinghurst, Jodi Picoult, Prue Leith, Carol Ann Duffy and more.
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