2026 Festival Archive

BBC Music Magazine award-winner Fenella Humphreys presents a solo violin recital staged in the round by candlelight in the beautiful and intimate setting of Gidleigh Church.

With music spanning almost 350 years, this programme explores the extremes of a solo violin from possibly the best known masterpiece, to freshly discovered gems new and old. Recent works feel timeless with Sally Beamish taking her inspiration from a 10th-century poem full of birdsong, and Caroline Shaw’s In Manus Tuas based around the music of Thomas Tallis*. Bach and Biber take us to a world of deep reflection, whilst Matteis Sr and Anna Berg whirl and flutter in music full of improvisatory magic.

The programme concludes with the iconic Ciaconna from J. S. Bach's Partita in D minor, undoubtedly one of the greatest works ever written for solo violin. Composers throughout the ages have marvelled at Bach's artistry in the Ciaconna, amongst them the great Johannes Brahms who wrote (in a letter to Clara Schumann)...

“On one stave, for this small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.”

* Tallis's In manus tuas, which is the inspiration for Caroline Shaw's work, will be sung by Corvus Consort as part of Festival Compline later the same evening.

End your day with a meditative choral Compline service by candlelight in the gorgeous setting of Gidleigh Church.

Compline is a contemplative church service for the close of day, characterised by melodious threads of medieval plainchant and prayers for a peaceful night. As well as singing the plainchant, Ensemble-in-Residence Corvus Consort performs Renaissance choral motets by Thomas Tallis and Tomás Luis de Victoria. (Tallis's In manus tuas is the inspiration for Caroline Shaw's violin piece of the same name that features in Concert 1: Luminous Strings earlier the same evening.)

Towards the end of the service, Corvus will also perform the beautiful motet Ave Maria by our Composer-in-Residence Kerensa Briggs. Composed just last year for the renowned Presteigne Festival, this work will give a lovely insight into Kerensa's choral music, ahead of the premiere of her newly written piece for Corvus Consort later in the festival.

The service will open with an instrumental prelude composed specially for this event by Kerensa Briggs in her role as WAF's 2026 Composer-in-Residence, which will be performed by the Festival String Quartet.

Join Corvus Consort as they celebrate depictions of animals in vocal music, with special guest appearances from the young participants of WAF's Learning & Engagement programme.

Composers from the Renaissance period were especially keen on writing music about creatures, and they also knew how to have fun with it! Members of Corvus Consort perform a variety of madrigals mostly from the sixteenth century, which are a great showcase for the onomatopoeic word-painting capabilities of the choir. Later, Corvus will also perform the whimsical miniatures of Eric Whitacre's Animal Crackers, before finishing with the beautiful song Butterfly by Finnish composer, conductor and educator Mia Makaroff.

At the heart of the concert the WAF Children's Choir takes to the stage accompanied by Harry Baker to perform a short set of songs they have been learning as part of WAF's Learning & Engagement programme. Also themed around creatures great and small, their performance will include one item in collaboration with Corvus Consort, and a brand new song written specially for the Children's Choir by Composer-in-Residence Kerensa Briggs.

The concert will also feature a performance from a choir of Secondary School students, who have participated in their own Come&Sing workshop earlier in the day. WAF is delighted to partner with several local schools to widen its offering of singing opportunities for young people in Devon.

Corvus Consort teams up with violinist Fenella Humphreys to explore artistic responses to the poetry of George Herbert, revolving around stunning music for voices and violin by Alec Roth.

The first half of the programme reveals how George Herbert’s words have inspired multiple generations of contemporary composers, through Herbert settings by Judith Weir, James MacMillan and Alec Roth. Choir and violin join forces right at the start of the concert to perform Rise Heart, a dramatic new work by Alec Roth commissioned specially for this programme — this will be only its second ever live performance, after the world premiere in July this year.

The second half illuminates Herbert’s influence not only on composers, but on other poets as well, through two intertwined works by Alec Roth. The six movements of Shared Ground set poems by Vikram Seth, each modelled on a particular poem by Herbert, and inspired by Seth’s experience of living in the same house where Herbert wrote much of his poetry nearly 400 years earlier.

Alec Roth composed Shared Ground while staying in the very same house (house-sitting for Vikram Seth!), and the influence of George Herbert is strikingly tangible throughout both words and music. Roth’s trademark evocative harmony, imaginative word-setting and liquid vocal lines combine to create a sparkling work, alternately brimming with energy and floating in magical stillness. As well as Seth’s poems, Roth also sets the four-line inscription George Herbert had set into the wall of his house — the same text used by James MacMillan for his To My Successor which appears in the first half of the programme.

While staying at the house, Roth also composed Ponticelli (‘Little Bridges’), a charming partita for solo violin, where each movement is inspired by one of the five bridges in the grounds of the house. Roth intended the two works to be performed together with the movements interspersed, and that is how they are presented in this programme. When performed in this way, the six movements of Shared Ground are beautifully connected by the five bridges of Ponticelli.

Enjoy a morning coffee at Throwleigh Church, as the Festival String Quartet showcases a century of remarkable quartets by women.

"For me, the best music is an impassioned argument" wrote English-Irish composer Elizabeth Maconchy, whose thirteen string quartets are some of the finest 20th-century compositions in the genre. Her Quartet No. 3 is exactly that, with heated exchanges running between the four string instruments, the voices repeatedly entwining and breaking apart throughout this psychological thriller of a piece.

The other 20th-century quartet in the programme is by Germaine Tailleferre, the only female member of the famous French group of composers dubbed 'Les Six'. Her quartet is a masterpiece of concise French modernism, on the surface appearing light, pretty and melodic, but soon revealing itself to be bubbling with intense struggle and tension beneath.

Jessie Montgomery's Strum, by contrast, brings joy to the start of the programme. Making the most of the percussive possibilities of the string quartet (as the title suggests!), Montgomery draws on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement to create a narrative that, in her own words, "begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration".

Finally, we hear Caroline Shaw's Blueprint, a thrilling piece inspired by Beethoven's String Quartet Op.18 No.6, literally taking Beethoven's work as a 'blueprint' and transforming it into fresh and exciting colours. The work becomes a conversation not just between the four instruments, but between players and composers, past and present, performers and audience, creating a multi-layered dialogue bound to spark both argument and ecstasy!

The programme will also feature the concert premiere of a new work for string quartet by our 2026 Composer-in-Residence Kerensa Briggs.

The voices of Corvus Consort guide us through a captivating soundscape tracing the story of Shakespeare's most enchanting play, which has inspired so much beautiful music for choir.

In the atmospheric setting of Drewsteignton's ancient church, Corvus's continuous tapestry of sound will frame the narrative of The Tempest, including vocal settings of texts from the play, and underscored recitations of some of its most famous speeches.

Vaughan Williams's renowned Three Shakespeare Songs sit at the heart of the programme amongst Frank Martin's masterful Five Songs of Ariel. The programme also features music by Cecilia McDowall, John Rutter, Amy Beach and Shakespeare's contemporary Robert Johnson, all woven together by the sinuous melodies of Jonathan Dove's Ariel for solo soprano (featuring soloist Sumei Bao-Smith).

Friday's late-night show sees indie-folk band Iris & Steel> take to the stage in The Long Room, bringing their trademark energy and style for a great night at the Drewe.

Iris & Steel's timeless and original sound features intimate and uplifting songs, carried by soulful strings, sophisticated songwriting and three-part harmonies. Based in London, the all-female and non-binary core quartet comprises guitarist and lead songwriter Lydia Higman and lead vocalist Olivia Poust alongside string players Athena Octavia and George Lloyd-Owen, who WAF audiences will know as members of our Festival String Quartet.

Recent years have seen Iris & Steel play sold-out shows all over London, release two EPs, and perform to a packed crowd at Latitude Festival on the personal invitation of George Ezra.

Drop in 10:00-12:00 for coffee & cake at Endecott House, and enjoy some informal performances from our resident artists.

Go behind the scenes with Corvus Consort as they work with Composer-in-Residence Kerensa Briggs on her newly commissioned piece for choir.

Hosted informally by Freddie Crowley, this session provides a free opportunity to pull back the curtain on the creative process of coaxing a brand new piece of music off the page and bringing it to life.

Kerensa Briggs will explain some of the finer details of her newly commissioned piece for Corvus Consort ahead of its world premiere performance in Concert 7: Songs of the Sea the following day. Meanwhile Freddie will guide Corvus Consort as they rehearse and develop the piece with Kerensa, while offering insights on the process of rehearsing with a choir.

Join specialist workshop-leader Julia Hollander for an inspiring and holistic singing workshop, staged in collaboration with Chagford Community & Memory Cafe.

Baritone George Clark returns to WAF with his duo partner Pierre-Nicolas Colombat to perform an eclectic set of love songs, alongside Benjamin Britten's majestic cycle Songs and Proverbs of William Blake.

Their first-half collection of love songs spans both centuries and genres, ranging from Lieder by Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann through 20th-century English Song, to popular tunes by Terry Callier and Nick Drake. These songs are curated to trace the course of an amorous romance, and open up broader questions of how we relate to others and the world around us. A couple of items will be performed with the upper voices of Corvus Consort, in a collaboration conceived specially for this concert.

Their second half is devoted to Britten's Songs and Proverbs, a cycle of fourteen short movements brimming with intense lyricism and dramatic characterization. The cycle draws its texts from William Blake's Proverbs of Hell, Auguries of Innocence and Songs of Experience, and includes famous lines such as "Tyger, tyger, burning bright" and "To see a world in a grain of sand...". The musicians describe this remarkable work as "a full-on reckoning with the Other, sometimes with majestic disdain, and other times fanciful curiosity".

Together George and Pierre form a formidable duo. Westcountry-born, Düsseldorf-based baritone George Clark (who regular WAF attendees will remember from our 2022 & 2023 festivals) recently won 1st prize at the Fanny-Hensel-Wettbewerb 2026 Lied-duo at Schloß Weißenbrunn in Germany, and is currently Artist in Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo, Belgium. French-American Basel-based pianist Pierre-Nicolas Colombat has won prizes at both the Wigmore and IVC international song competitions, as well as co-founding his own arts festival in Boston, USA. The duo were finalists at the 28th International Singing Competition Lied-Duo in Clermont-Ferrand and won 4th prize at the Copenhagen Lied Competition 2025.

Curated by WAF favourite Harry Baker, this year's Festival Jazz Night features special guest trumpeter Laura Jurd, who jazz superstar Jamie Cullum called "the kind of musician I want to be in my next life".

Laura will front a specially convened jazz quartet with Harry on keys alongside drummer Corrie Dick and bassist Nick Pini, performing her own original music which celebrates and innovates in the rich traditions of jazz and folk. Described by BBC Music Magazine as "simply stupendous ... a glorious shifting collage of sound", her music digs into something primal and earthy, whilst taking twists and turns that prove Laura to be one of the UK's most distinctive composer-performers in contemporary music.

For their second set, the quartet led by Laura and Harry will be joined by WAF's own Festival String Quartet for a very special one-night-only collaboration.

And back for another year by popular demand, the evening will open with an a cappella set from the "WAFter Eights", formed from the lower voices of Corvus Consort.

Come along to Endecott House for a family-friendly concert all about music and movement. Get ready to jump, dance, wiggle and jiggle, tap your toes, sway, stomp, and sing, in this interactive, fun-filled concert for children aged 2+ and their grown-ups!

Join us at Astor's Bookshop in Chagford as we host celebrated author Julia Hollander for a Q&A and booksigning event, featuring her acclaimed book Why We Sing.

Described by Lesley Garrett as "a must-read for anyone moved by the power of song", Why We Sing is a fascinating exploration of the intrinsic role of singing in human nature and society. Through personal anecdote and scientific fact-finding, Hollander celebrates the way song inspires and heals us throughout our lives, from the cradle to the grave.

"Enlightening, written from the heart" – BBC Music Magazine

As a singing therapist, teacher and performer, Julia Hollander is in a unique position to consider singing’s importance to our wellbeing, charting its extraordinary influence on all aspects of our spiritual, emotional and physical lives.

Why do parents feel compelled to sing to their newborns, and how does it help their development? What is it about song that brings communities together in harmony but also in protest? How come an activity that helps to embed languages and maths formulae can also be used to rehabilitate Long Covid sufferers? And what magic is at work when people who have lost the power to speak are still able to sing? By delving into her own life experiences, and calling on those of her fellow singers, the author seeks to answer these questions, underpinning her findings with the latest scientific research.

An opportunity for people of any musical background to join together in song, and go on to share the stage with our professional artists.

WAF's ever-popular Learning & Engagement Co-Lead George Cook will lead a group singing workshop, focussed around the joys of singing folk songs collectively. Participants will then take to the stage alongside our professional artists to perform in Concert 7: Songs of the Sea.

13:00 – 15:00 : workshop in Endecott House
16:00 – 17:00 : rehearsal in Chagford Church
18:00 – 20:00 : concert in Chagford Church

The Come&Sing is open to everyone, whether or not you can read music, and whether or not you've had any formal musical training. Everything will be taught by ear, with sheet music and/or wordsheets available for those who would like them.

We aim for a Come&Sing experience that can be enjoyed by people of all musical backgrounds, and we look forward to welcoming you!

All WAF's resident artists join forces for the festival's finale concert, full of music inspired by the ocean, including traditional folksongs alongside 20th-century and contemporary music.

The centrepiece of the second half will be Charles Villiers Stanford's ebullient Songs of the Sea for baritone solo, piano and male-voice chorus, which will be performed by guest soloist George Clark with pianist Harry Baker and the tenors and basses of Corvus Consort. Harry will also be joined by the Festival String Quartet to perform instrumental items inspired by the Scottish coastline from Landscape to Light by Scottish pianist-composer James Ross.

At the end of the first half, our Come&Sing choir will take to the stage to perform a short set of songs learned earlier in the day as part of our Come&Sing workshop, open to members of the community from any and all musical backgrounds. Accompanied by Harry Baker, the Come&Sing choir will also share the stage with both Corvus Consort and the Festival String Quartet.

The concert will also feature the world premiere performance of a new work for choir by Composer-in-Residence Kerensa Briggs, written specially for this concert. A sneak preview of Kerensa's new work is possible a day before the premiere in our Open Rehearsal event.