A varied line up of singers and shows have been announced for a new Festival of the Voice to be held in Cardiff this summer.
Organised and produced by Wales Millennium Centre, the festival will run in Cardiff venues from the June 3 to 12, 2016.
It will include new works, several co-productions across various musical genres and a string of performances including performer John Cale, Van Morrison, Bryn Terfel and Rufus Wainright.
The WMC co-produced and/or commissioned projects include a new music theatre work aimed at eight plus age group, based on the story of The Little Mermaid, called The Last Mermaid, will be at WMC, co-curated by Charlotte Church, Jonathan Powell and Sion Trefor.
There will be performances of a new co-production with WNO of the Poulenc La Voix Humaine’s and co-produced with Welsh National Opera and directed by its artistic director David Pountney. It will be performed in a modern Cardiff apartment for an audience of 35 people at a time.
A news work called Before I Leave by Welsh writer Patrick Jones will include covers of songs by artists ranging from Tom Jones to the Sex Pistols and new music by Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers. This is a co-production with National Theatre Wales
WMC has also teamed up with Yorkshire Festival in association with Warwick Arts Centre, for Opera for the Unknown Woman a new sound work for voices with a science-fiction vision of Earth in the 21st and 22 centuries.
A new community singing project Choir Clock, devised to mark the final weekend of the festival and produced by Serious with WMC, will have 20 different choirs in 20 locations across central Cardiff. This will involve performances in a different location every hour on the hour, culminating in a late evening mass singalong at the WMC of ‘Myfanwy’.
There will also be choral events involving the WNO Chorus and male choirs, school children marking the Roald Dahl anniversary through song through song plus a Cymana Ganu at St David’s Hall.
Musical genres will also include hip-hop at the city’s new venues the Tramshed, alternative Welsh music and visual arts landscape artists performing at the city’s Jacobs Market.
Full details: www.festivalofvoice.wales / www.gwylyllais.cymru