Manchester International Festival

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The Manchester International Festival is an international cultural festival of original new work, which will be held in the English city of Manchester in 2007. The festival will run between June 28 and July 15, 2007. It is planned to be a biennial event.

1 Pre-festival commissions
2 2007 festival
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Pre-festival commissions

The Festival is being promoted and initiated with three pre-festival commissions. The first of these took place in November 2005, when Gorillaz performed live at the Manchester Opera House. Recordings of these performances were later released as the Demon Days Live DVD. The second was The Schools Festival Song, a new piece by Ennio Morricone and Nicholas Royle sung by an 8,000-strong schools' choir, organised by Young Voices, which took place on December 4, 2006.

The third will be an art installation, in conjunction with the Imperial War Museum, by Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen, as a response to the 2003 Iraq war and as a tribute to British service personnel killed in that conflict. It will exhibit in the Great Hall of Manchester Central Library from February 28 to July 15, 2007.

[edit] 2007 festival

The full Festival programme will not be released until March; however as of January 2007, details of three productions have been announced.

The Festival's showpiece production will be Monkey: Journey To The West, a re-working of the ancient Chinese legend Journey to the West, by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, who are collaborating on their first major project since Gorillaz. Albarn will write the score while Hewlett will design the set and costumes.^[1] Adapted and directed by Chen Shi-Zheng, whose credits range from classical Chinese opera to the forthcoming Meryl Streep movie Dark Matter, the show will also feature 45 Chinese circus acrobats, Shaolin monks and Chinese vocalists. The production will be designed and created by Théâtre du Châtelet in co-operation with the Manchester International Festival and the Berlin State Opera. It will be performed at the Palace Theatre.

As well as Monkey, the Festival will also showcase two other events. The first is Il Tempo del Postino, a visual arts show curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno and produced in conjunction with the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, which will be performed at the Manchester Opera House. The other will be a new stage adaptation of The Pianist, combining the original words of Władysław Szpilman with the music of Frederic Chopin; it will be performed by leading pianist Mikhail Rudy and directed by Neil Bartlett at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.