The Wharfedale Festival 2008, the 102nd, kicked off on Saturday 10th May with adjudicators Margaret Smith, Gareth Green, Stanley Roocroft and Jayasree Sen Gupta on the music side, and Priscilla Morrris, Tish Nicoll and Brian Hindle for the speech and drama classes.

On Sunday 13th May, we were welcomed to the Baptist Church for our Special Service of Rededication.

A lower level of entries this year resulted in a couple of empty afternoons, and I managed to fill these to everyone’s satisfaction with workshops on site in local primary schools for both Music and Drama.

Our Creative Writing competitions were this year adjudicated for the first time by Lizzi Linklater and our Primary School Poster competition was judged by members of Menston Art Club.  Winning entries formed the basis of our Festival promotion around Ilkley and were displayed in shop windows and other public places, including the Grove Bookshop and the Library foyer, the Lower Hall in Christchurch and also on the Festival website, and prizes were presented at the Festival Celebration Concert in Christchurch on the following Wednesday, along with other major prizes from the week’s performance.

Please click to read more on Secretary's Annual Report, 2008

Wharfedale Festival of Performing Arts winner , soprano Donna-Marie Povey recently sang before the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire at Chatsworth House and has released her first CD of popular operatic arias and well-known songs Fans of Channel Four’s Operatunity show – a classical music version of talent contest The X Factor - may recognise her from the show. Ilkley people may also remember her from the 2007 Last Night of the Proms concert on The Grove and also 2007's Wharfedale Festival of Performing Arts where she also won the prestigious Arthur Wilson Award.

Read the entire article on the Wharfedale Observer website.

For a little light relief, we have added a couple of Music Trivia Quizzes for our visitors enjoyment.

The first is for those above a certain age and covers easy, difficult and just plain impossible questions on all aspects of music. Ten questions a day and you do need to register, though it's all free to play. However, so far I've not been spammed by the quiz hosts, so hopefully this will not be an issue. In fact the only emails I've recevied from the Trival Site that hosts the quizzes for us, have been one a month to advertise a New Quiz has started at the beginning of a month.

The second quiz is based on the Pop Charts and again, ten questions a day ranging from easy to hard and all are based on the various decades of the UK Pop Charts.

Have fun!

General Music Quiz

Pop Charts Quiz

Matthew Johnson who is the 2007 Wharfedale Festival of Performing Arts Speech & Drama representative to the Festival Championships to be held in Horsforth in September.

Also congratulations to Nuthana Prathivadi of Halifax who is our Dance representative and flutist Alice Thompson from York who represents the Festival in Music.

If you have a Musical, Festival, Theatre or Entertainment website, please consider joining our new Top 100 Festival Sites list. 

Together we can help advertise your site to other Festival websites, to visitors and bring interesting Festival and Entertainment websites to a wider audience.

There are separate categories for Music Festivals, like the Wharfedale Festival of Performing Arts, Theatre Groups, like the Ilkley Upstagers' Theatre Group, as well as "Other Entertainment" websites. This last covers websites that deal with General Entertaiment, for example: fan sites for TV Shows, Movies and so on.

Please click to read more on Top 100 Festival Websites