Buxton International Festival announces 2023 programme

Buxton International Festival (BIF) has today revealed the programme for the upcoming 2023 season. Running from 6 to 23 July 2023, the programme features more than 120 events over 17 days in various venues across the Peak District.

This years festival will see the premiere of three new opera productions, as well as performances from a range of artists including Nicola Benedetti, The English Concert, The King’s Singers, mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, soprano Lucy Crowe, and pianists Joanna MacGregor and Gwilym Simcock.

Festival CEO Michael Williams said: ‘It’s a stop-in-your-tracks, shout-from-the-rooftops festival this year.  Buxton 2023 is full to the brim with daring and excellence. It’s contemporary, relevant, reflective and provocative with sumptuous opera, glorious music and opinion-forming book talks.’

BIF’s classical programme kicks off on 9 July with a performance from the Victoria String Quartet, then Jack Hancher, the only classical guitarist to have won the ROSL gold medal will perform a concert of Dowland, Britten, JS Bach and Spanish composer Antonio José on 10 July.

Also on 10 July, violinist Nicola Benedetti joins forces with The English Concert for a programme focusing on Vivaldi alongside Corelli and Geminiani before tenorNicky Spence and pianist Joseph Middleton present ‘spring’, the first in a series of four concerts celebrating art song through the four seasons of the year. Joseph Middleton, who curated the series, will then appear in a ‘summer’ concert alongside Staffordshire-born soprano Lucy Crowe, before collaborating with Dame Sarah Connolly for the ‘autumn’ concert and Ashley Riches for ‘winter’.

BIF will also welcome The King’s Singers for the ensemble's Buxton debut as well as returning favourites the Sacconi Quartet, the Sitkovetsky Trio, The Solis and Paddington Trios and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective. 

The festival’s 2023 opera programme includes brand-new production of Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula, Handel’s Orlando and Mozart’s Il re pastore. Dame Shirley J Thompson, who was recently revealed as one of the composers chosen to write a work for the King’s upcoming coronation, will bring her one-woman opera, Women of the Windrush, starring soprano Nadine Benjamin, to the festival on 12 July.

Priority booking for the festival will open on 7 March, with public booking available from 4 April.