Cambridge Summer Music Festival \u2013 the city\u2019s oldest music festival \u2013 is back this month, promising another enviable line-up of top musicians performing in venues across the city and beyond.<\/p>\n
The much-loved annual event runs from today (Wednesday, 1 July) to Saturday, 25 July.<\/p>\n Ben Johnson, acclaimed international tenor and the festival\u2019s director since 2022 \u2013 who will also be giving a singing masterclass at The Old Divinity School as part of the festival this Saturday (4 July) \u2013 says: \u201cI think we\u2019ve got some really exciting, big events this year.<\/p>\n \u201cFor example, we\u2019ve got the London Mozart Players<\/strong> coming for the finale, and I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve been to our festival before.<\/p>\n \u201cIt [the London Mozart Players\u2019 concert] is a brilliant programme celebrating the Boyd Neel Orchestra.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s got gorgeous string music in it, by Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten\u2019s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a fab programme, brilliant soloists, and Petroc Trelawny<\/strong>, from BBC Radio 3 and TV, is coming to present it and talk about the programme.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a bit of a coup to get Petroc, and the London Mozart Players at Saffron Hall \u2013 I think that\u2019s going to be my highlight of the festival.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ben, who has enjoyed a varied career as a singer, conductor, teacher and artistic director, also singles out a performance of Vaughan Williams\u2019 A Sea Symphony<\/em> by Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra<\/strong> on Sunday, 5 July, at Saffron Hall, and the Choir of Clare College<\/strong> doing Spem in Alium<\/em> at Our Lady and the English Martyrs Catholic Church on Saturday, 4 July, with The Coro Giovanile Clairi\u00e8re of the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana<\/strong> and Concerto Scirocco<\/strong> as other events to watch out for.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I should mention La Nuova Musica<\/strong> are doing a Handel oratorio,\u201d adds Ben. \u201cI booked them in my first year and they were sensational.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy to have them back performing Handel at Trinity, which is such a lovely venue to do a Handel work in\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI should say that\u2019s sort of what I try and do, I try and match the venue and the music together because, unlike a lot of festivals, you have so many different venues.<\/p>\n \u201cCambridge is rich in lots of beautiful spaces for music, all over the city \u2013 or as far as Saffron Hall, and we have music in Childerley Barn.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really important to me to match the music to the space, so the right music is in the right place, and when that works, I think the whole experience is just\u2026 having done it for a few years, I think I\u2019m getting there now.\u201d<\/p>\n Ben notes that \u201cwe also have some really intimate music, chamber music,\u201d adding: \u201cI like to support up-and-coming young musicians, particularly in this very difficult time that classical music finds itself in in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He reveals: \u201cSo we\u2019re teaming up with other things, we\u2019re supporting the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, with Lily Mo Browne and Graham Johnson<\/strong> on 18 July.<\/p>\n \u201cShe [Lily Mo Browne] won the Ferrier last year, so this is a lovely showcase for the Ferrier winner.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the [2025] Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL) Gold Medal-winner, who\u2019s an oboist \u2013 Ewan Millar<\/strong> \u2013 coming, again, another showcase for a young, award-winning musician, and a series of concerts from our association with YCAT, which is the Young Classical Artists Trust<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n There will also be a recital featuring Canadian pianist Ryan Wang<\/strong>, who captivated audiences worldwide when he won BBC Young Musician in 2024 at the age of 17, on Tuesday, 7 July, at Pembroke Auditorium.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ben co-founded the Southrepps Music Festival in Norfolk and is a vocal professor at the Royal College of Music.<\/p>\n His international performance career has included concert, recital and opera performances, and he has made several appearances at the BBC Proms, performing at the Last Night in 2017.<\/p>\n He has performed in most of Europe\u2019s great concert halls, as well as Carnegie Hall and Boston Symphony Hall in the USA.<\/p>\n Ben has enjoyed a close relationship with the English National Opera, as well as performing extensively with companies including Glyndebourne, Op\u00e9ra National de Lyon, Bergen National Opera, and Op\u00e9ra National de Bordeaux, among others.<\/p>\n For the Cambridge Summer Music Festival line-up, go to cambridgesummermusic.com<\/a><\/em>. Visit benjohnsontenor.org<\/a><\/em> for more on Ben.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cambridge Summer Music Festival \u2013 the city\u2019s oldest music festival \u2013 is back this month, promising another enviable line-up of top musicians performing in venues across the city and beyond. The much-loved annual event runs from today (Wednesday, 1 July) to Saturday, 25 July. Ben Johnson. Picture: Keith Heppell Ben Johnson, acclaimed international tenor and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2483481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[348859,488928,22034,21800,468169],"class_list":["post-2483480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-cambridge","tag-cambridge-university","tag-events","tag-music","tag-whats-on-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Cambridge-Summer-Music-Festival-lines-up-\u2018big-events.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2483480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2483482,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483480\/revisions\/2483482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2483481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2483480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2483480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2483480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk\/_media\/img\/VZ0E5BLCQJ4KODMBVW62.jpg\")