Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2021 Programme Announced

The UK’s largest international festival of new and experimental music presents a vibrant programme of concerts, performances, talks, exhibitions and installations running from Thursday 18 November to Monday 22 November 2021.

With the previous year’s event having been presented online and via BBC Radio 3 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s festival represents the long-awaited return of in-person attendance for the hcmf//, with ensembles and performers from the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium travelling to Huddersfield to perform. BBC Radio 3 will again be providing comprehensive coverage of the event on contemporary music programme, the New Music Show.

Graham McKenzie, hcmf//’s artistic director, said: ‘In curating the five-day festival against the on-going risks and uncertainty of the pandemic, we are placing a huge emphasis on protecting the health and well-being of our artists, our audiences and the festival team. Within this context, we are nevertheless ‘cautiously excited’ to be presenting a programme that celebrates live performance and brings a community of composers, musicians and artists back together with in-person audiences. Whilst some things will necessarily be different this year, with the number of events and capacity more limited, we believe that the changes are merited in order to enable artists and composers to once again share their music in a live setting.’

In order to accommodate socially-distanced seating, the five-day programme will be presented across three of hcmf//’s larger spaces – St Paul’s Hall, Huddersfield Town Hall and Bates Mill Blending Shed - and all events, including free events, will require pre-booked tickets.

This year’s composer in residence, Israeli/American composer Chaya Czernowi, will be a particular focus of the event’s programme, which will also feature World Premieres including a large-scale ensemble piece by John Butcher, as well as new works by Cath Roberts and James Dillon. The festival will also present UK Premieres including works by Laurence Osborn, Eva Reiter, Enno Poppe and Eva-Maria Houben, and Mauro Lanza and Andreas Valle. Many of the new pieces presented this year have been created through hcmf//’s commissioning activity, including its COVID-19 Commissions programme.

Featured ensembles in this year’s hcmf// include the UK’s Explore Ensemble, Riot Ensemble, Red Note Ensemble, the Arditti Quartet and GBSR Duo. European visitors range from Germany’s EnsembleMusikfabrik to Ensemble Klang and Ictus Ensemble. Soloists include Irvine Arditti, Noriko Kawai, Agata Zubel and Juliet Fraser.

Public booking opens on Thursday, September 30 and full details of the programme and tickets are published on the festival’s website.