Festival is ready to roll (From Stroud News and Journal)

Festival is ready to roll

FOLLOWING on from the success of the inaugural 2005 event, the second Wychwood Music Festival will be held over the first weekend June and already boasts an impressive line up.

Wychwood is a festival with no boundaries, where cutting-edge contemporary music mixes seamlessly with folk traditions, and world music beats rub shoulders with experimental jazz, where mainstream artists mix with local ones and boundaries between audience and performers blur.

The strong, diverse line-up ranges from hotly tipped newcomers The Feeling and local band made good The Guillemots to the formidably talented violinist Sophie Solomon and Mercury Music Prize nominees Seth Lakeman and Polar Bear to established names such as Billy Bragg and Eliza Carthy.

"Wychwood delivers a unique intimate line-up of music and events, which at its heart has a message that music is a common language that can unite us all," said Festival organiser Graeme Merifield.

"I based it on the ancient Wychwood Forest Fayres which ran until the 1850s and which, at their peak, could attract 40,000 people to sing, dance and make merry.

"The tradition was cut short when the landowner cleared the area, selling the oaks to the Navy, to make ships for colonisation."

It takes place on June 2, 3 and 4 at the Cheltenham Racecourse. Tickets, priced £85 for weekend passes or £25 for day passes, are available from: www.aloud.com or from Cheltenham Box Office on 01242 227979.

All tickets include camping and Under 11s get in free.

Visit the Wychwood Festival website for updated listings and general information: www.wychwoodfestival.com