Dartington Music Summer School & Festival returns 24 July to 21 August 2021 and focuses on jazz in its fourth week with Peter Edwards and his Nu Civilisation Orchestra. The group and advanced jazz instrumentalists will workshop Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, which the orchestra presented at the 2019 BBC Proms, and which Gareth Thomas reviewed in Jazz Journal.
The instrumentalists will be joined by Dartington’s amateur choir, led by Carol Pemberton and Celia Wickham-Anderson (Black Voices) to prepare for a closing performance of the piece. Edwards and the NCO will also give a week-long courses on jazz improvisation and jazz standards.
The team from London’s avant-garde venue Café OTO will be in residence too for a course with Ryoko Akama in site-specific and situational performance. Participants will use “found objects and the abundance of natural phenomena within the Dartington estate to create a sounding space.”
Dartington Trust describes itself as “a centre for learning, arts, ecology and social justice based on a 1,200 acre estate near Totnes.”
