SMF2010 brochure launch

As more than one person said last night at the 2010 Festival brochure launch at the St Magnus Centre, Kirkwall: "It cannot be a year since we last did this!" Be that as it may, the brochure is out. As usual, festival supporters will receive theirs in the post, and Orkney residents through their letterbox - copies are also available at all good Orkney leaflet stands, and from the St Magnus Festival Office, Victoria St, Kirkwall.

It's time for all of us to start working out which tickets to order (and to promise ourselves, once again, that we will be early-bird patrons, getting those orders in to the SMF Office before 4 April). One of my favourite things at this time of year is carrying the brochure around, and agonising over what to see this year. Although Glenys Hughes, Festival Director, assures us again this year that it is just possible to see everything on offer, most of us have to acknowledge (with varying degrees of reluctance) that there will be other trivial commitments in Festival week (like sleeping, eating, working, family life, work, rehearsing and performing, as appropriate). There are so many things to do and see in the Festival these days that (even though ticket prices offer fantastic value compared with any similar event in Scotland, the UK or the world) financial reality is about the only hope of balancing a desire to do everything, with likely energy levels in June!

Choosing will be no easier than normal, as was clear when Glenys presented some of the highlights and themes planned for this, the last Festival before she hands over the Director's ...erm... baton to Alasdair Nicolson and Tanya McGill:

• events bringing Polska! Year (presenting the best of Polish arts and culture in the UK) to a conclusion during SMF 2010
• celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Fryderyc Chopin
• a BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra residency (I wonder if they will share their experiences at SMF online, like the RNSO did last year on their blog and twitter feed?)
• a Hebrides Ensemble residency throughout the Festival, with involvement in the Orkney Conducting Course, running simultaneously with the Festival
• as in the previous 2 Festivals, there will be another music theatre piece by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, this time Le Jongleur de Notre Dame
• appearances by violinist Nicola Benedetti
• vocal ensemble I Fagiolini, with renaissance and contemporary music
• events as usual in many parts of Orkney, with visiting and local artists collaborating to present performances in Stromness, Deerness, Lamb's Holm (The Italian Chapel), Eday, Stronsay, Hoy (Gable End Theatre), Westray and others
• 7 concerts will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3
• the Festival will open with The Doctor and the Devils, a screenplay based on the story of Burke and Hare in 1830s Edinburgh, by Dylan Thomas; specially adapted by Vivia Leslie as a Festival community production, with music by Alasdair Nicolson (to transfer to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 9-15 August, Venue 45)
• Martyn Brabbins will conduct the BBC SSO and Festival Chorus on the Sunday evening, the Chorus this year with a record-breaking 140 singers
• the Orkney Schools Orchestra are collaborating with the BBC SSO in Side by Side, with young Orkney musicians integrated with, and playing alongside, BBC SSO members

I have not even mentioned the excitement of MagFest UP CLOSE, and their plan to build an entire temporary theatre, or the literature and visual arts strands of the Festival. Hopefully others will have something to say about them on the blog soon!

With the involvement of the Orkney Traditional Music Project, performers for the Johnsmas Foy, local bands playing in the Festival Club, the Festival Chorus, the Orkney Schools Orchestra, and local actors and technical crew in the community theatre production Orkney residents (as has been the case at the St Magnus Festival for over 30 years, and this year at least 400 of us) have the chance to work collaboratively with world-class visiting artistes in June: that all this has kept going (and developed as it has) has been thanks to the vision and hard work of Glenys and her predecessors, supported by Angela Henderson, George Rendall, and hundreds and hundreds of volunteers in Orkney (and by an impressive and bewildering array of sponsors, all of whom can be seen on the back cover of the brochure). Each of us who has been involved along the way owes each of them an enormous debt of gratitude.

What do other island communities do at midsummer?