“What next for Bath festival?” asked Tom Service last May, on the eve of one of the British music calendar’s most prestigious annual events. The then 66-year-old festival, which had included Yehudi Menuhin, Michael Tippett and Joanna MacGregor among its artistic directors, and which for decades basked in its high-culture dominance of the south-west’s artistic landscape, seemed to be on the ropes. It was short of funding, shedding audiences and losing its artistic director only two years into the job.
Service’s apprehension was justified. Two months later, the Arts Council of England withdrew Bath’s National Portfolio funding, a further indication of the competition the festival was facing from newer arts operations around the region. The organisers announced that their shows – they run children’s and adults’ literature festivals, too – would go on, but the future of the festival was shrouded in uncertainty. As Tom had observed in his blog: “We have to hope that this isn’t the beginning of the end.”
So what comes next? Judging by the 2015 festival, which featured South African star Hugh Masekela’s rousing finale gig last Monday, and a run of sold-out concerts that embraced many different types of music, a new chapter is beginning.
This year’s creative and box-office successes suggest the festival is taking steps in the right direction. Bath 2015’s musical mix included chamber music, a Byrd mass in the abbey, Mike Westbrook’s jazz settings of the poetry of William Blake, a Messiaen recital from pianist-in-residence Steven Osborne and two hit gigs from New York retro-jazzers the Hot Sardines.
Behind the programme were two Bath newcomers – classical specialist James Waters, an Edinburgh festival associate director for 14 years, and David Jones from Serious, architects of the London Jazz festival, and promoters of some of the UK’s most musically adventurous genre-blending tours. It is expected that Jones (whose close involvement with Serious continues) and Waters will remain in charge, with their contracts extended to 2018, when the festival celebrates its 70th birthday.
Jones, an irrepressible enthusiast whose pace of delivery would alarm horse-race commentators, is too savvy to believe the festival has turned a corner yet, but he knows exactly what the challenge is. “When Menuhin and Tippett were involved,” he says, “Bath was the artistic high point of the year throughout the region. Now there are many alternatives, such as the Bath Mozart festival, an adventurous programme at the Wiltshire Music Centre, the Colston Hall in Bristol, the Cheltenham Jazz festival.
“OK, the budget here has got smaller, and there still isn’t a lot to play with, but I believe in participation and collaboration, sharing ideas with others in the same field in the region. I’m used to working with small budgets. My experience with Serious has often been about finding a third way to raise money, so it’s not just about big public funding and massive headline sponsors. There are plenty of music lovers in smaller local companies who can put money into a festival they feel really involved with.”
Jones is the most inclusive kind of music lover, but his focus was initially on developing the jazz component that has been a significant part of Bath’s programming for years. What excites him is growing the jazz audience. “Bath probably has a smallish audience for jazz per se,” he says. “But it has a potentially big audience for artists making new music that might include jazz. The Westbrook Blake event took place in the iconic church of St Mary’s Bathwick, I’m sure a lot of people turned up not as jazz fans but curious to see what the Bath Camerata choir would do with it, and how it would sound in that space. Five people walked out, but 300-odd gave it a standing ovation. The kora player Seckou Keita and the Welsh harpist Catrin Finch had a beautiful collaboration in the Guildhall, and I’m sure a chamber music audience related to it just as easily as a world music one.
“I don’t know what the future will bring, but I know I felt proud, finding myself dancing with hundreds of people to Hugh Masekela last Monday,” Jones concludes. “People were saying to me they hadn’t been to the festival for a couple of years, but now they were reconsidering it. We just have to make sure they do.”
