The Cambridge Folk Festival
is an annual music festival held on the site of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is renowned for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. It occurs over a long weekend (3½ days) in summer at Cherry Hinton Hall. The festival has become very popular and tickets sell out quickly. Its current title sponsor is The Co-operative Group. Until 2008 it was sponsored by BBC Radio 2 where it is broadcast live, while highlights are recorded and shown later on the digital television channel BBC Four.
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CAMBRIDGE FOLK FESTIVAL TICKETS
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History
In autumn 1964
Cambridge City Council, England, decided to hold a music festival the next summer and asked
Ken Woollard, a local firefighter and socialist political activist
[1], to help organise it.
Woollard had been inspired by a documentary,
Jazz On A Summer’s Day, about the 1958
Newport Jazz Festival. The first Festival sold 1400 tickets and almost broke even. Squeezed in as a late addition to the bill was a young
Paul Simon who had just released
I Am A Rock
. The festival's popularity quickly grew. Woollard continued as Festival organiser and artistic director up until his death in 1993. It is now run by Cambridge City Council Arts & Entertainments, together with over two hundred event staff.
Current structure
Most artists perform more than once over the weekend on the different stages: Stage 1, within a large marquee in front of the main Festival arena, the Stage 2, a smaller marquee and the Club Tent, hosted on the Festival’s behalf by five local folk clubs. There, in addition to invited artists, members of the audience including some well known names get up and perform.
Artists
It is often said that the main "folk" aspect of the festival is the audience, not the performers. As well as the more obvious folk singers, recent festivals have seen performances from
Chumbawamba,
Joe Strummer and
The Mescaleros and
The Levellers. 2006's line up included
Emmylou Harris,
Cara Dillon and
Seth Lakeman. In 2007 a double album was released
"Cool As Folk: Cambridge Folk Festival"
, with live recordings by
Altan,
Kate Rusby,
Beth Orton,
Martin Simpson,
Eliza Carthy,
Joan Baez and many others.
Notes
- History, Cambridge Folk Festival official site. Accessed 24 March 2009.