Tree of Strings Festival: a new music celebration

The Tree of Strings Festival has come and gone from Abbotsbury, but it is worth knowing about for anyone who follows the Dorset music scene. The new three-day multi-genre celebration ran from Friday 3 July to Sunday 5 July, curated by the internationally renowned cellist Adrian Brendel. It was an intimate programme that pulled together classical chamber music, jazz, folk and contemporary work, and it also marked the public launch of the Tree of Strings Charity, which Brendel co-founded with CEO Elinor Shields to make music more accessible and support emerging musicians through education, workshops and performance opportunities.

The concerts were held in historic village locations, with the Abbotsbury Tithe Barn and St Catherine's Chapel sharing the bill. The line-up leaned on some serious names: Mercury-nominated jazz pianist Kit Downes, the celebrated pianist Joanna MacGregor, violinist Abigél Králik, pianist Joseph Havlat, award-winning folk performer Tim Laycock, Brazilian percussionist Adriano Adewale and violist and singer Gareth Lubbe. A Young Artists programme sat alongside them, giving the Elmore Quartet, Leeds International Competition bronze medallist Khanh Nhi Luong and cellist Hugo Svedberg their moment. The programme itself moved from an evening of tango, jazz and samba to a Beethoven and Brahms piano recital, an afternoon of improvisation and a family Samba Drumming workshop for visitors aged 10 and over.

Brendel is the obvious thread through it all. He has been a member of London's Nash Ensemble since 2014 and made his debut at Wigmore Hall in 1999, having studied at Winchester College and Cambridge University and later with Frans Helmerson at the Cologne Conservatory from 1996 to 2001. His teachers have included Alexander Baillie, Miklós Perényi and William Pleeth, and he comes from a musical family: his father is the pianist Alfred Brendel, with whom he recorded Beethoven's cello sonatas in 2003 and 2004.

Downes is another name worth knowing. He records as a solo artist for ECM, has won a BBC Jazz Award and has toured the world playing piano, church organ and harmonium with his own bands, ENEMY, Troyka, Elt and Vyamanikal. He teaches piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, where he holds a Fellowship, and has previously taught at the Purcell School of Music. He is also a patron of the charity Musical Keys.

One of the venues is a destination in its own right. St Catherine's Chapel is a 14th-century building on Chapel Hill, looking out over Chesil Beach and the Isle of Portland, and it has been Grade I listed since 26 January 1956. English Heritage owns it, and it was originally built by the monks of the nearby Benedictine Abbotsbury Abbey as a place of pilgrimage and retreat. The chapel sits on a hill about 80 metres high that dominates the coast from Portland Bill to Bridport, at Chapel Hill, Abbotsbury, Weymouth, DT3 4JH, with free entry and the exterior accessible at any reasonable time during daylight hours. For the festival, the main visitor car park was at Abbotsbury Village Car Park on Rodden Row, a few minutes' walk from the venues, with the village's swannery, subtropical gardens and Jurassic Coast viewpoints nearby.