Oxford Festival of the Arts is proud to announce SIMPLY SWING night at the New Theatre on 13 July with the BBC Big Band directed by the inimitable Barry Forgie, and one of the UK’s finest jazz and big band vocalists, Iain Mackenzie. [Iain Mackenzie] knows how to swing a band to rude health – Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club World-class musicians … a brilliant musical force – The Telegraph Join us for the last night Read more…
Oxford Festival of the Arts is thrilled to be announcing that award-winning saxophonist, rapper, and BBC Jazz Presenter, Soweto Kinch (who also read History at Oxford!) will be performing his new album: SOUNDTRACK TO THE APOCALYPSE for our final Friday Night in Festival Hall on July 11 with this trio. Soweto Kinch melds jazz and beat-based hip-hop in this album that completes a trilogy with Black Peril and White JuJu. All three works are political, Read more…
Haydn came to Oxford in 1791, where he was conferred with a Doctorate from the University of Oxford. A ‘Grand Music Festival’ in the Sheldonian was fully reported in The Gentleman’s Magazine. ‘When Haydn appeared, and, grateful for the applause he received, seized hold of, and displayed, the gown he wore as a mark of the honour that had in the morning been conferred on him, the silent emphasis with which he thus expressed his Read more…
We are delighted to announce that Oxford Festival of the Arts is embracing “Disappearance of Worlds”, an exhibition by Chantal Meza – a Mexican painter living and working in the UK, whose work for the past decade has confronted the violence, terror, and the complexities of disappearance in both a human and ecological context – within this year’s edition of the festival. This project is collaboration with Pembroke JCR Art; Pembroke College Oxford, University of Oxford; Read more…
We are proud to present Songs of Bulbul, a captivating new dance performance by Aakash Odedra inspired by the ancient Sufi myth of a caged songbird, in collaboration with the Oxford Playhouse. Featuring choreography by Rani Khanam and music by Rushil Ranjan, this exquisite performance is an immersive dialogue between the intense physicality of Kathak and the spiritual journey of Sufism, merging music, dance, and poetry traditions, renowned for precise rhythm and storytelling. Nightingales, or ‘bulbuls’, hold a special Read more…
We are excited to announce our first ever event in London! Who Tells the Story? Journalism in an Age of Disruption – a panel discussion featuring three alumni of Magdalen College School, now working on the front line of journalism. Following our hugely successful discussion between award-winning journalist and author, Misha Glenny, specialising in central and eastern Europe, global organised crime, and cybersecurity, together with BBC political correspondent Rob Watson, and your valued feedback for more such events, we Read more…
We are delighted to unveil our first performance for Oxford Festival of the Arts 2025! A spectacular concert – Fire and Water – with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra at the ‘magnificent’ Sheldonian Theatre on July 12 at 7.30pm. Linked to our theme – Magnificent Oxford – the performance will be featuring the city’s Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, with the music of Handel, who, in 1733, spent a week in Oxford at the invitation of the Vice-Chancellor, directing a festival of his own Read more…
Oxford Festival of the Arts is pleased to announce an open call for photographic works on the theme “What is your Oxford?”. “What is your Oxford?” will be an exhibition at Pembroke College Art Gallery curated from chosen photographs received in answer to the brief. We are asking for still photos that capture what our city means, or is, to you, or as seen through your eyes. Stills can be abstract, figurative, or -scape. They Read more…
We are delighted to unveil the theme for Oxford Festival of the Arts 2024. With the wonderful restoration work on the nine muses on the top of Clarendon Building on Broad Street, it seems a most opportune moment for the festival of the city to celebrate this iconic building within Oxford in its programming through the concept of a “muse”, or indeed, the nine muses. Expect to be tantalised and inspired by the muses; and Read more…
Inspired by the eleven panel mosaic representing mythological scenes associating Bacchus/Dionysius with the nine muses, the festival is delighted to be presenting wine and absinthe tastings in this year’s programme. The mosaic is possibly the work of an African itinerant mosaicist in the late Roman period. It was discovered in 1947 by a team from Florence in the Roman Villa of Torre de Palma in southern Portugal and is now housed at the National Museum Read more…
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