- Friday 20 June to Friday 27 June 2025
- Centred around the theme of Earth, this year’s festival takes root in the very soil, land and planet in which we live.
- Magfest Members Priority Booking opens at 10am on Monday 31 March 2025.
- General Booking from 10am on Monday 7 April 2025.
Have you wondered what became of those old cassettes and AM radios, maybe even that whisk your grandparents used? Experience some of the most creative recycling you’ll come across in the quirky sonic soundbath that is Saved, the brainchild of creator and performer Graeme Leak, at this year’s St Magnus Festival.
In a programme that spans this “love child of Buster Keaton and Bowie”* to pianist Mihai Ritivoiu playing an elemental recital on Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s piano in his final Orkney home of Sanday, the festival continues to weave a magical spell over the islands through the long days and light nights of midsummer.
Orpheus in his Cottage, on Sanday, is the festival’s tribute to one of its founders Peter Maxwell Davies in what would have been his 90th birthday year. Mihai Ritivoiu performs a selection of music that brings together Maxwell Davies’s Three Sanday Places with current director Alasdair Nicolson’s tribute to Max, Magnus IV, Orpheus in his Cottage, and other works for piano by Schubert and Debussy inspired by land and the elements.
Orkney Voices won the opportunity to conceive a creative project for Johnsmas Foy, St Magnus’s nod to the Viking festival heralding the start of the midsummer herring fishing season. Their presentation brings together music, visuals, live painting and poetry in the local dialect to celebrate Robert Rendall, a significant Orkney figure and close friend of George Mackay Brown.
The Johnsmas Foy celebrations continue with Lynn Barbour’s new exciting promenade performance set amid the ancient landscape of Sandwick in the Elemental Garden of Legend and Lore and around the fireside with stories from the midsummer world of Orkney in The Peedie Folk o’Hill and Mound.
Possibly the only sci-fi world created in Orkney dialect, Harry Josephine Giles’s award-winning verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia takes us out of this world in a spell-binding production with music by BAFTA-winning composer Atzi Muramatsu and direction by voice specialist Susan Worsfold.
This year’s visiting writers include journalist, writer and radio producer Jen Stout to discuss her award winning first book Night Train to Odesa; writer, historian and photographer David Gange in a discussion about his 2,000km kayak journey which captured a sensory experience of the ocean with histories of communities whose lives are built on seafaring in small boats in The Frayed Atlantic Edge; poet Niall Campbell shares insights into his latest collection, The Island in the Sound; and author of twelve novels, four plays, a memoir, playwright, curator and award-winning documentary film-maker James Runcie joins Nicolson to discuss everything from his detective novels set in Grantchester to a memoir about his wife Marilyn Imrie.
Joining James Runcie for a wonderful weave of extracts from his novel focused on JS Bach, The Great Passion, with Bach’s music is award-winning violinist and festival favourite Fenella Humphreys.
Fenella Humphreys takes inspiration in sea, sky, wind, birds and more in a fascinating array of music including two Scottish premieres from Marcus Rock and Laura Shipsey at St Magnus Cathedral.
The festival opens with young Glasgow based pianist Nikita Lukinov and the Resol String Quartet in St Magnus Cathedral bringing centuries of music culminating in Beethoven’s elusive Piano Concerto No 4 in a version for piano and string quartet.
Lukinov returns in Stromness Town Hall with reflections on the months of May and June. And Resol String Quartet returns to demonstrate the elegance of the string quartet in two performances with works by its master, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Caroline Shaw, with the group joined by Mihai Ritivoiu for Schumann’s piano quintet.
Two unusual instrumental duos are set to open ears and minds with their new approaches to familiar tunes from those of John Dowland to Joni Mitchell. The Grant McQuade Duo brings together guitar, double bass and voice in a combination which stunned audiences at their Wigmore Hall debut. The Stevens & Pound Duo mix percussion, melodeon and harmonica in Ascending, a cross-genre concert full of original compositions and folk re-imaginings of popular classical works such as Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and Holst’s The Planets - themselves inspired by folk music.
Guitarist Grant McQuade also brings atmospheric music from Brazil, Belgium, France and Spain to the newly refurbished old cheese-making room at the Swannay Brewery.
Live Music Now Scotland continues to be an important collaborator with St Magnus Festival, this year represented by the Swedish, Scottish and Irish influenced folk music of Kristina Leesik and Eleanor Dunsdon.
Folk music and tango get tangled in Escocia Duo’s evocative, lively and sometimes poignant preservation and reimagination of these traditional sounds for audiences in Kirkwall and Hoy.
Orkney, Shetland and Scottish tunes are the focus of young Orkney folk band Auskerry in what is sure to be an entertaining evening at The Sound Archive. And one of Orkney’s finest fiddle players and composers Jennifer Wrigley teams up with Laurence Wilson for Sounds of Folk.
One of the UK’s most exciting emerging vocal groups, Echo Vocal Ensemble visit the festival as artists in residence performing a programme of music about earth and sky from the time of the renaissance right up to the very minute of performance in front of the audience; an afternoon of sung and spoken word with Niall Campbell at the beautiful St Ninian’s Kirk by the sea in Deerness; and a collaboration with the Festival’s own celebrated Chorus to bring together a performance of Dvorak’s stunning Mass in D.
Collaborators flautist and composer Gemma McGregor and violist Katherine Wren take audiences on a pilgrimage across Orkney in McGregor’s new work, The Pilgrim’s Path. The well trod St Magnus Way leads to St Magnus Cathedral where the performance against the backdrop of the Sails for St Magnus hung between the Cathedral’s medieval pillars, reveals six new works whose titles are inspired by George Mackay Brown interspersed with spoken word.
Director and composer Alasdair Nicolson also sits down in conversation with the recently appointed Master of the King’s Music, Errollyn Wallen to talk about life as a composer and her move to Orkney.
Running just below the surface of the festival will be the first Orkney Accordion Course, taking place throughout with local musicians joined by participants from further afield and led by Karen Tweed and Karen Street and celebrated in a performance at the end of the festival.
Finally, this year’s exhibition at Ship of Fools gallery in Kirkwall is Lost at Sea, an astonishing private collection of model boats in a display conceived by gallery owner and ship’s captain, Maiwenn Beadle in memory of those that never come back.
The St Magnus International Festival is grateful for the ongoing support of Orkney Islands Council and Creative Scotland. The festival is also delighted to partner with the following businesses and foundations on this year’s event, many for the first time: The Gordon & Ena Baxter Foundation, d and h legal and property services, KRM Digital Marketing, Northlink Ferries, The Orkney Distillery, Pentland Ferries, Sutherland’s Pharmacy and The Old Library.
Festival Director Alasdair Nicolson commented: “We’re delighted to share our programme for the 2025 Festival which will, once again, fill the beautiful long midsummer days of Orkney with a wide spectrum of events to entertain and intrigue. This year’s overarching theme is Earth: the soil, the land, and the planet - where we look at how we interact with the place that we live, how much artistic creativity has taken this as its starting point and even how we recycle.
“There’s repurposed electric musical instruments in the unusual and eclectic theatre show Saved, a reflection of the life of the Orkney poet and nature writer Robert Rendall and new musical commissions that reflect upon the land and landscape in Fenella Humphrey’s solo recital. Many performers are ‘in residence’ and we’re pleased to be welcoming Echo Choir for a series of concerts (one alongside our own Festival Chorus), the pianists Mihai Ritivoiu and Nikita Lukinov and a number of writers, novelists and poets. We’ll also be exploring some new venues around the mainland with events at Swannay Brewery and Deerness Distillery and a late-night concert in the Kirkwall Masonic Lodge. There is lots to enjoy and I hope you will join us in June.”
Emma Gee, Arts Officer, Orkney Islands Council commented: “St Magnus Festival is focussing in on the Earth at a crucial time for us to be reflecting on our shared world. As ever the Festival is grounded in the hyper local with resident artists born, bred and recently adopted, and it is that commitment to the creative ecology of Orkney that is the Festival’s very foundation. But the programme also reaches above and beyond (literally to the Planets) to bring us constellations of talent to our shores in order to provide a diverse mix of performances that should delight, provoke thought and entertain. This programme promises to be stellar!”
Emma Campbell, Music Officer at Creative Scotland said: "Showcasing a diverse blend of art forms, genres, and formats, this year's captivating and imaginative programme celebrates the rich tapestry of arts and culture from Orkney and beyond. Bringing together a festival community of artists and audiences in a magical midsummer setting that celebrates the natural environment, this year's event is sure to offer inspiration, new ideas and immersive experiences for all those attending."
Magfest Members Priority Booking opens at 10am on Monday 31 March 2025.
General Booking from 10am on Monday 7 April 2025.
*Ben Sturdy
Background
Header image is courtesy of St Magnus Festival.
Creative Scotland is the public body that supports culture and creativity across all parts of Scotland, distributing funding provided by the Scottish Government and The National Lottery, which, now in its 30th year, has supported over 14,600 projects with more than £501.9 million in funding through Creative Scotland and its predecessor, the Scottish Arts Council. Further information at creativescotland.com. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Learn more about the value of art and creativity in Scotland and join in at www.ourcreativevoice.scot.
Media contact
Susie Gray, Premier Scotland, 07834 073795 [email protected]