Final preparations are being made for the Island’s biggest arts event of the year as the Manx Competitive Music, Speech and Dance Festival gets underway on Friday (22nd April).

The Guild, as it’s commonly known, is being sponsored by award-winning property developer Dandara for a second year. It will involve over 4,000 competitors in around 200 dance, drama and music classes, which will mostly be held at the Villa Marina until Saturday 30th April. This year marks 100 years since the festival was first held at the iconic Douglas venue.

It will spring into action for the first time this year with ballet and modern dance classes, a range of singing classes from opera to musical theatre, a plethora of music instruments and plenty of speech-based drama in between.

The ever-popular children’s choir classes will take place on Saturday 23rd April. For the first time this year, tickets went on sale in advance and are now sold out. This will be followed by Manx and Country Dancing, Folk Song and Songs from the Musicals classes for young people in school years 9 to 13.

On Sunday 24th April there will be more dance classes and the popular Brass Bands. In St Thomas’ there will be singing (including Oratorio), organ and reading from the Bible.

On Monday 25th in the Royal Hall there will be a feast of piano classes. There has been a large increase in piano entries this year and undoubtedly some of the best pianists in the Island will be performing in a range of solo and duet classes. In the Promenade Suite the very entertaining Folk Song and Trios and Quartets classes will certainly attract a substantial audience so anyone interested in attended is advised to get there early. At the same time there will be drama in the Noble Suite and opera in St Thomas’ Church.

Classes continue on Tuesday 26th with instrumental ensembles and the special classes for our best singers and drama in the Broadway Cinema. Arguably, the highlight of the night will be Battle of the Bands in the Royal Hall, featuring three Rock and Pop classes. The evening’s entertainment will include a compere and an audience vote, which will decide the winners.

Wednesday 27th April sees the second set of specials, strings and drama classes. In the evening there will be vocal ensembles, Popular Song and the Victorian and Edwardian Ballad. It will be followed by Music Hall and Comic Song, which will include Victoria Wood and Noel Gay songs, which have been introduced after a change to the syllabus this year.

Recorder, Girls Solo and Spoken Word fill Thursday’s programme with a substantially larger than previous TE Brown class in the evening. The exceptionally popular Songs from the Musicals will take place from 6.30pm.

Friday 29th April will feature singing, Character Study and Original Compositions in Poetry and Prose. As the evening progresses audiences will enjoy Duets, Choirs and Lieder. In a change from the usual programme the Cleveland Medal Test will take place on Friday evening from 8.30pm, pitting the winners of the various specials classes against each other for the most prestigious prize of the Festival - the Cleveland Medal - which has been presented by the Cleveland Manx Society every year since 1923.

Many people attend the adult choirs classes on the final Saturday of the Festival (30th April) with male voice, ladies voice and mixed choirs to entertain. The Saturday night sees another new development with ‘Festival’s Finest 2016’: a concert showcasing some of the most enjoyable performances from the week.

Chairman Sarah Kelly said: ‘This year’s Guild is a combination of all the best in its 124-year history combined with some new and exciting developments to take us forward into the future. The festival has always moved with the times and this is a new era of change to broaden the appeal to new audiences and performers. We would like to thank our sponsors Dandara for their second year of support.’

Official programmes for the festival are now available in outlets around the island and from the Villa Marina. Season tickets for the festival cost ?30 and three special events cost ?8 for adults and ?4 for under-18s, available from www.villagaiety.com or by calling 600555.

For further information about the Festival please go to www.manxmusicfestival.org. 

Photo - Stage One Theatre Group