Programme Announced For The Bridge Festival in April 2022

Four innovative classical music organisations from across Europe announce the programme for a new festival celebrating music for strings, taking place across Glasgow from 21-24 April 2022.

Presented by Scottish Ensemble (UK), Ensemble Resonanz (Germany), Trondheim Soloists (Norway) and PLMF Music Trust (Estonia), The Bridge Festival brings some of Europe's best string players - and most innovative ensembles - to Glasgow.

The festival centres around dynamic, creative, collaborative live performances that aim to showcase the power and variety of music for strings. In both separate and collaborative concerts, each company will bring their own slant on the more innovative ways in which classical music can be presented, as well as the spaces it can illuminate, with events taking place in venues across the city where classical music might not usually be found.

Seeking to inspire new ways of thinking about music for strings, the events will be enriched by collaborative endeavours across the board: from visual artists, to musicians from other, non-classical genres, to young musicians, to people on the street as professional musicians spring up right across the city for performances.

Each ensemble will deliver a headline event showcasing their own distinctive style and ethos, through a mix of acclaimed Signature Productions - including Scottish Ensemble's boundary-breaking collaboration with Anna Meredith and visual artist Eleanor Meredith, Anno, and Ensemble Resonanz's award-winning urban string chamber music club night.

The festival opens with its most significant collaboration, Nachtmusik. Over forty string musicians, including all three ensembles as well as musicians from the PLMF Music Trust umbrella, will take to the stage at Glasgow's iconic Barrowland Ballroom in a spectacular concert s celebrating the tantalising diversity and colour of music for strings, and its place in contemporary cultural life. The evening centres around new commissions by two composers straddling the worlds of rock, pop and classical composition: experimental pop artist and film composer Mica Levi (UK), and former rock frontman turned celebrated composer Erkki-Sven Tüür (Estonia).

Igniting imagination at the same time as embedding classical music into everyday spaces and contemporary life, events will take place at a range of venues across the city, taking classical music out of the expected concert hall setting and into venues more readily associated with other art forms, and other musical genres. Concerts will take place at two of Glasgow's foremost east end gig venues, intimate music hub Saint Luke's and Glasgow's iconic Barrowland Ballroom, as well as the historic Merchants House, award-winning creative hub Glad Café, post-industrial international arts space Tramway and one of Glasgow's hidden architectural gems, the Mackintosh Church.

The Bridge is a festival bringing European collaboration and breathtaking performance to the people of Glasgow. Whether encountering Bridge performances for free in public spaces, via a 'Pay what you think it's worth' policy for the late night urban string gig, through multi-event ticket discounts, and discounted £6 tickets available for those living in the G40 postcode, as well as for students, under 30's and unemployed, the aim is for audiences across the city to get involved and discover something new.

The festival is presented by The Bridge network, established in 2018 with support from Creative Europe. Across the past three years, these four forward-thinking classical music organisations from across Europe have come together to explore, share and develop ideas around artistic innovation and audience diversity in the classical music sector, as well as developing a string ensembles network.

The Bridge network and festival, originally planned for May 2020, continue to be supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

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