The Guiting Music Festival gets underway on Friday 20th July with one of the most celebrated classical music quartets opening proceedings.

The internationally renowned Albion Quartet, who have played at all the leading music venues across Europe and regularly appear on BBC Radio 3, have the honour of playing the first performance of the 2018 festival, and event organiser Katherine Judge is looking forward to welcoming the acclaimed musicians to Guiting Power. She said: “We always work hard to book a well-known musician or group to open the festival. The Albion Quartet come with a big reputation, they’re fantastically talented and we’re so excited to welcome them to open our 2018 festival.

“This year we’ve several acts who have played at the festival before plus we’ve got some groups making their debut performance. Jennifer Pike is a previous winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year title, we’re particularly delighted to welcome her to this year’s festival. We make a real effort to book a variety of performers that our audiences can enjoy.”

As well as hosting some of the most talented classical musicians, the festival holds open-air concerts in the fields adjacent to the village hall. Katherine explains: “We have jazz and blues days that are held outdoors. People can bring picnics and relax in the wonderful countryside. We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that this glorious weather lasts!

“To have something as wonderful as this annual music festival on our doorstep is remarkable really. It’s great for the local area, we’re a small but thriving community. Ticket sales are going very well, they’re above where they were at this stage last year so that’s very encouraging. In an ideal world we’d love for every performance to sell out but that might not happen. We’re a small festival, the indoor venue is the village hall which holds under 200 seats. A lot of our acts tell us they really enjoy the intimacy of a small venue, it makes a welcome change from the larger venues they are used to playing in.

“The Festival is funded by so many wonderful local people who have been long-term supporters of the festival, they’re incredibly loyal. Our Income is derived entirely from sponsorship, donations, advertising and ticket receipts.”

Other performers playing at the festival include famous Russian pianist Vitaly Pisarenko who returns for his second performance. Described as ‘one of the most precocious and original young talents of the keyboard in recent years’ his show gets underway at 7:45pm on Thursday 26th July. Another performer sure to put on a great show is classical guitarist Thibault Cauvin who has performed over 1000 solo concerts, including shows at the New York Carnegie Hall, the Moscow Tchaikovsky Hall, the Beijing Forbidden City, and the London Queen Elizabeth Hall.