A Welcome from the Artistic Director for Gloucester

Welcome to the 295th Three Choirs Festival! This year we will be offering an exciting mixture of innovative and traditional festival concerts. I do hope that you will join us for Gloucester 2023, for an exciting festival which looks both forwards and backwards!

Adrian Partington
Artistic Director

Priority Booking Dates

Gold & Life Members: 3 April

Silver Members: 12 April

Bronze Members: 19 April

What's happening this year?

We celebrate scientific pursuits, marking the bicentenary of the death of local vaccination pioneer Edward Jenner,innovations in music therapy and the life of inventor Humphry Davy through a choral work by fellow Cornishman Graham Fitkin.

We introduce our own small innovation in a reimagined opening celebration and discover John Squire, a Victorian trailblazer for amateur singing.
Clare Hammond shines a light on pioneering composer and pianist Hélène de Montgeroult; families can explore the workings of a string instrument in Stringtastic; and we welcome an all-female group of cathedral singers,
the Lady Clerks, for their debut performance in the latenight series.

Other late nights include Marcus Davidson’s Standing Waves, a multimedia fusion of recorded natural sounds and music from East and West, and music inspired by migration. Ruth Wall’s multi-harp recital showcases music from the Scottish Highlands and folk-group Coracle perform music from their recent album inspired by migrating flocks of birds.

One composer who brought many new works to the Three Choirs Festival was Gloucestershire-born Ralph Vaughan Williams, widely celebrated throughout 2022 to mark his 150th anniversary. This year’s festival is the end of coordinated national celebrations – ‘A Year of Vaughan Williams’ – and features a host of rarely heard and well-known works.

Just as it did at the premiere of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia 113 years ago, the festival continues to resound with music fresh from the page and champion the music of composers with a connection to the Three Choirs counties. This year, you can catch twenty-one premiere performances as well as the revival of our 1999 festival commission, A Song on the End of the World by Francis Pott, which won our ‘premieres league’ contest during lockdown.