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The Swaledale Festival takes place over two weeks in May and June each year, in churches, chapels, castles, ‘Literary Institutes’, pubs, fields and village halls scattered around Swaledale, Arkengarthdale and Wensleydale. The largest venues seat about 400 people; the smallest venues as few as 40. The main focus of the Festival is on small-scale classical chamber music. Choral music, folk music, brass bands and jazz also feature, as do talks, films, exhibitions, poetry readings, workshops and guided walks.

In 2011, the Festival was described by The Guardian as one of the 10 best classical music festivals, and by the Daily Telegraph as one of the 25 opera and classical festivals of the season. The Guardian again featured the Festival in its 2012 Festival Guide in a short list which included Aldeburgh, the BBC Proms, Bath, Cheltenham and Glyndebourne. The Festival attracts around 7,000 visitors a year.

A key feature of the Swaledale Festival is the commitment to new commissions and recently composed works; commissioned pieces by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Michael Brough and Heather Fenoughty received their premières in 2012. The 2013 Festival (25 May to 8 June 2013) will include premières of works by Sally Beamish, David Blake, Stephen Goss, Tim Garland, Roland Dyens and Graham Coatman.

Early History
The early history of the Swaledale Festival is in three strands, which merged in the 1980s.

The Richmondshire Festival
The biennial Richmondshire Festival was founded in 1965 by Dr A J Bull, the retired music organiser for the North Riding of Yorkshire. A week of music and drama in and around Richmond, it was initially scheduled in September, to attract motorists driving south from the Edinburgh Festival. Musical highlights of the first Richmondshire Festival included a recital at Aske Hall by the Melos Ensemble, with Gervase de Peyer, Cecil Aronowitz and Emanuel Hurwitz, and a concert at the County Modern School by the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, as it was then known. There were also performances by local school, amateur and scratch groups, tea-dances, talent contests, and military bands beating the retreat.

The 1967 Richmondshire Festival programme lists Arthur Bull as the "Hon. Organiser", and the Marquess of Zetland as Patron. There are no known records for the next decade. In 1969 the Festival moved to a May date, and by 1978 Dr Bull had started to look for a successor.

The 'pre-history' of the Swaledale Festival
In the mid-70s, a number of musicians who were active in Swaledale had begun to organise collaborative events. It is not yet known to what extent these constituted a festival, but a surviving concert programme from June 1978 is certainly headed 'Swaledale Festival'. The high quality of the performers on that occasion - Maureen Smith (violin), Marion Hillier (violin), Noel Broome (viola), Joy Hall (cello), David Munro (double bass), Brenda McDermott (piano) - suggests considerable confidence on the part of the organisers.

Two festivals in partnership
In 1980, the violinist Trevor Woolston, who had recently moved to Swaledale, ran a fundraiser concert for the Sunday School in Fremington. In 1981 Woolston ran an expanded series (ten events, most in St Andrew's Church, Grinton) “as part of the Richmondshire Festival”. This included concerts by the Lindsay String Quartet and the Yorkshire Baroque Soloists, who would become regular visitors.

The circumstantial evidence from the 1970s, the lack of evidence that the concerts of 1980 and 81 took place under the Swaledale banner, and a close reading of Woolston's statement that in 1982 "a Swaledale Festival was arranged" all suggest that Woolston did not originate the Swaledale Festival, as has been supposed, but merged his own vigorous programming into an already established Swaledale Festival.

In 1983, the Richmondshire and Swaledale Festivals ran in partnership over three full weeks. As far as can be inferred from the available programmes, there was strict demarcation between the two: Richmondshire limited itself to odd years and to the immediate area of Richmond; Swaledale was annual, and went no further down-dale than Marrick.

In 1984 drama and crafts were added to the Swaledale Festival. In 1985 the two Festivals again ran in parallel. In 1986 the Swaledale Festival Friends were formed.

Swaledale goes it alone
The Richmondshire Festival folded in 1987, and the Swaledale Festival "took over" several Richmondshire Festival artists, including Northern Sinfonia, and expanded down-dale into Richmond. Also in 1987, an international element was added, with performers from Bolivia and Finland.

In 1988 the Swaledale Festival expanded its geographical coverage again, with concerts in Wensleydale. By 1989 the Festival was active from Keld in Upper Swaledale to Bedale in Lower Wensleydale, and Trevor Woolston joked about changing the Festival's name to "The Festival of the Upper Dales, Richmondshire and the Teesside Hinterland". Also in 1989 the Festival gained an 'Autumn Encore', half a dozen events in October and November. Performers that year included the Fitzwilliam Quartet, which would become a Festival regular. By 1991, part-time staff and volunteers had been recruited to look after administration and publicity, and the Woolstons were preparing to retire. The last Autumn Encore took place in 1992.

In 1993 Elizabeth Carter was appointed Artistic Director, a post she would hold until 2002. Trevor Woolston stepped down, though he would continue to appear at the Festival as a performer. Also in 1993, the Festival became a registered charity with a formalised constitution and a Board. The first recorded Chairman was the composer David Blake, a professor at York University, and resident in Askrigg; and the first Board members included the daughter of the late Dr Bull - a nice piece of continuity.