Bradfield Festival of Music
The award-winning Bradfield Festival of Music is an annual celebration of classical music performed in the Parish Church of St Nicholas’, a historic 12th century church set in the beautiful landscape of High Bradfield, Sheffield within the Peak District National Park.
The Festival in 2023 will run from Saturday 24th June to Saturday 1st July. Revived to its present format in 1998, evidence from the Bradfield Parish archives shows that a music festival was also held in the Parish Church on Whit Monday in 1813, 1825 and 1835. Little did those festival organisers of 200 years ago know that a week-long festival would be happening in the same church today.
During the first two years of the revived Festival the programme was largely comprised of performances by locally based musicians and singers. New ground was broken in 2000 when, for the first time, the Lindsay String Quartet was engaged as the “headline act”. Following that experience the Festival began to include better known artists in its programmes and in 2004 Julian Lloyd Webber, now the Festival’s President, performed for the first time at Bradfield.
The Festival now attracts the finest artists from all over the world who collectively perform a wide range of music genres within the classical tradition. There is a strong connection between the Festival and young musicians and annual awards are presented to the two most promising young musicians based at the Sheffield Music Hub. As well as prize money, the Award Winners are given the opportunity to perform at one of the concerts.
The Bradfield Festival of Music, a registered charity, does not receive any national funding whatsoever, but does receive limited financial assistance from generous local business sponsors, local charities, and individual supporters.
Bradfield Festival of Music 2023 promises to be another very special concert series with an array of outstanding international musicians and vocalists. All of this year’s artists have appeared at one or more of the world’s most prestigious venues and we are privileged that they have chosen to support this Festival.
Bradfield is a picturesque village 8 miles north-west of Sheffield city centre, and is within the boundary of the Peak District National Park. The Parish Church of St. Nicholas, where the concerts take place, is a spectacular medieval, Grade 1 Listed Building blessed with excellent acoustics.
