Posts Categorized: Music

THURSDAY JUNE 26 2025

TICKETS ON SALE 9AM FRIDAY OCT 4

Following on from their critically acclaimed sold-out UK arena tour, Texas will be bringing their popular, crowd loving live show to Llangollen next summer.

Fronted by Sharleen Spiteri, Texas will showcase five decades of music from the worldwide classic I Don’t Want A Lover to the modern-day hits of Mr Haze and Keep on Talking when they headline Live at Llangollen Pavilion on Thursday June 26.

With more than 40 million albums sold, their songs continue to resonate with fans across the world including the ever popular Say What You Want, Summer Son and Inner Smile.

Tickets go on sale at 9am Friday (Oct 4) from llangollen.net and www.ticketmaster.co.uk

Speaking about the headline Llangollen concert, Sharleen Spiteri said: “I came to Llangollen for a gig this summer and was blown away by the incredible atmosphere and beautiful venue. We’ll have a great night with you next June and I can’t wait to see you all.”

The announcement is part of an ongoing partnership with Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod and Live Nation promoters Cuffe and Taylor.

Cuffe and Taylor co-founder Peter Taylor said: “We’ve had the pleasure of working with Texas before and they always put on the best show. They’ve produced hit after hit over 35 incredible years, so their Llangollen debut is definitely not one to miss!”

Artistic Director of the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod Dave Danford added: “Texas are undoubtedly one of the UK’s most beloved and enduring bands of the last few decades, and we’re delighted that they’ll be playing a show in the Llangollen Pavilion next summer. Sharleen Spiteri visited us during this year’s festival, and it’ll be great to have her back to take centre stage, along with the rest of the band, for a night to remember!”

It has already been announced that global pop rock sensation The Script will headline Live at Llangollen Pavilion on Thursday July 3.

Music fans are being given a ‘golden’ opportunity to experience Llangollen Eisteddfod’s Six Core Concerts in style this summer.

The Core Week of the Llangollen International Music Eisteddfod will open this year on Tuesday July 2nd with a headlining set from music legend Tom Jones, who kicks off six days of evening concerts, with mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins closing the week on Sunday July 7th.

Between these dates, audiences can enjoy a huge variety of evening events, featuring award-winning folk band Calan, royal harpist Alis Huws, Britain’s Got Talent favourites Johns’ Boys Male Chorus, West End and Broadway stars Kerry Ellis and John-Owen Jones, and two-time GRAMMY award-winning jazz sensation, Gregory Porter. (more…)

A famous radio broadcast by poet Dylan Thomas about Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod is being recreated to mark its 70th anniversary. 

The reading from actor, writer and director Celyn Jones will form the centrepiece of a mini programme of events to celebrate the literary magician’s 15-minute masterpiece on the BBC’s Home Service when he visited in 1953. 

The vivid verbal images conjured an enchanting and unforgettable picture from the unique event and was delivered in his deep, resonant voice. 

But it’s been revealed that the historic broadcast very nearly didn’t happen because at one point Thomas lost his notes on the way back to the BBC’s studio in Cardiff. 

That same year the late Queen Elizabeth also attended the Eisteddfod shortly after her Coronation. 

The festival had been established six years earlier under the dark shadow cast by the Second World War as a way of promoting peace through musical harmony and dance. 

Since then hundreds of thousands of competitors from all over the planet have beaten a path to Llangollen. 

The picturesque town in the Dee Valley where “Wales meets the world” is now gearing up for the first  full length festival since the Covid-19 pandemic struck. 

It all gets underway on Tuesday, July 4, and the competitions and concerts continue until Sunday, July 9, with thousands of singers and dancers from around the world due to take part. 

Each day features a full programme of competitions in the Pavilion and a line-up of stalls and exhibitions on the field along with the competitors from around the world, many in colourful dress while three open-air stages run a stream of live performances. 

Entertainment on the outside site includes workshops, talks, international showcases, outdoor theatre performances, circus skills, sound bath sessions, yoga, belly dancing, beginner’s Welsh and  salsa. 

The Globe Stage will feature music acts spanning folk, jazz, world and indie. 

There will also be an international flavour to the cuisine available in the new Globe Food Court. 

Visitors will be able to “go around the world in 80 minutes” with stalls serving food from different countries including India, Greece, Jamaica, Mexico, Germany and Italy. 

According to the Eisteddfod’s executive producer, Camilla King, they were particularly keen to celebrate the anniversary of Thomas’s memorable broadcast. 

She said: “Although sadly Dylan Thomas died in New York a few months after his visit to Llangollen, his priceless legacy will live on because he is rightly regarded as one of the literary greats. 

“We felt it was particularly appropriate to remember not only his brilliant broadcast but also the wider canon of his work which turned him into a superstar poet.” 

The activities will include a presentation by Prof Chris Adams, vice chair of the Eisteddfod and a member of its  Archive Committee, who revealed the poet was paid the princely sum of 20 guineas for his endeavours.  

Prof Adams said that  Swansea-born Thomas had “generated verbal images of the early Eisteddfod whose power resonates to this day”. 

It was all the more remarkable, he said, because locals recall he had spent a lot of his time in Llangollen in the pub, with the Wynnstay Hotel (now The Three Eagles) being a favourite watering hole. 

That was borne out by the late Aneirin Talfan Davies, the BBC producer who was despatched to Llangollen to keep an eye on Thomas, who accompanied by his wife, Aeronwy and their daughter, Caitlin. 

Talfan Davies, who was himself a talented poet, later told how Thomas had spent the week  “wandering aimlessly through the streets of Llangollen, with the odd half hour spent in the eisteddfod tent and many hours in the  bars of the town’s pubs.” 

He also described the poet’s way of working which involved “writing notes on cigarette packets, and the panic on the way back to Cardiff when Thomas feared he had lost the material”. 

Thankfully, the notes came to light in the nick of time and the finished, finessed piece has been described as a classic example of his genius with words. 

Apart from the competitions and remembering Dylan Thomas, other highlights include a concert starring Alfie Boe and musical theatre supergroup Welsh of the West End on the first night of the Eisteddfod on Tuesday, July 4. 

Wednesday will see The White Flower: Into The Light, a concert of remembrance for the fallen of Sarajevo and Ukraine, featuring the NEW Sinfonia orchestra with soloists from Bosnia, Wales and Ukraine, with the centrepiece formed by Karl Jenkin’s much loved work, The Armed Man. 

The popular procession of international participants and celebration of peace takes place on Thursday, followed by Flight, a new mixed-media dance, music and theatre work by visionary artists Propellor Ensemble, inspired by migratory patterns in nature and humanity. 

On the Friday night Guy Barker’s Big Band will take the stage with Strictly Come Dancing singer Tommy Blaize. 

Saturday features the blue riband event, the Choir of the World competition for the coveted Pavarotti Trophy, and also Dance Champions and the Pendine International Voice of the Future 2023. 

There is a new look to the final day of the Eisteddfod on Sunday with an all new live final which sees rising vocal stars battle it out to claim the title Voice of Musical Theatre, and Cân i Llan, a new song-writing competition for unsigned acts aged 14-22, providing a platform for emerging voices in contemporary popular music.  

Camilla King added: “Entertainment on the outside site spans across three main stages with further daily pop-ups and includes workshops in the Amphitheatre with Small World Theatre Company inviting visitors to create their own white flower sculpture and Propellor Ensemble building a giant instrument from recycled materials. 

“There will also be daily Lego building, arts and crafts, floral sessions from the Eisteddfod’s famed arrangers, circus skills with Jester Jack, Xplore Science, yoga, sound bathing, belly dancing and the chance to learn new skills from the wide ranging visiting competitors.  

“Talks on the Dome Stage feature Calan’s Bethan Rhiannon ‘From clog dancing to comedy’, poet Mererid Hopwood leading a panel for the annual Peace Lecture, reflecting on the incredible Women of Wales Peace Petition. 

“International showcases take the Globe Stage from acts including the Tibetan Tashi Lhunpo Monks, SOAS Min’yo Japanese folk music, Bosnian and Ukrainian performers, and music from Filkin’s Drift, Seprona, Kilbride Brothers, The Billy Thompson Trio, The Bartells, Chester Big Band and Lilly Boughey amongst many others.” 

Tickets & What’s On: www.international-eisteddfod.co.uk/whats-on/

Calling all budding contemporary music stars: a new songwriting prize has been launched to discover and support grassroots popular music, giving a platform to the next generation of original commercial music artists.

Cân i Llan (A Song for Llan), is open to unsigned individuals and bands aged 14-22yrs, writing and performing in any contemporary commercial style, from any country and in any language. Acts must submit two examples of original song material to enter, and selected acts will perform sets of up to 8 minutes in the first round on Sunday 09 July. The best writers continue to our live final that evening.

The stage of the Royal Pavilion Llangollen has played host to a starry line-up of popular music acts during the 76 years of the International Eisteddfod, including Status Quo, Van Morrison, The Stereophonics, McFly, Jools Holland, Kizzy Crawford, Elles Bailey, Shirley Bassey and The Manic Street Preachers.

Could you be the next act to join their ranks? Apply by 28 June to find out.

Entry Fee: £5 visit our main website to pay.

A search has been launched for singers from across North Wales to join a massed choir of 200 voices to call for world peace. 

The performance at Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod will pay tribute to the thousands of men, women and children massacred in the 1990s war in Bosnia and shine a light on the desperate plight of those currently suffering in war-torn Ukraine. 

The concert, called The White Flower: Into the Light, will be held at 8pm on Wednesday, July 5, just a few days before Srebrenica Memorial Day on July 11 to remember the 8,372 Bosnian Muslims who were massacred in in 1995. 

The White Flower motif has been adopted as a symbol of remembrance in Srebrenica and the 11 petals of the flower represent the day the genocide began. 

The theme of the concert was chosen to reflect the founding purpose of the Eisteddfod, an iconic event which was established in 1947 to promote peace in the aftermath of the Second World War. 

It will feature extracts from the haunting mass for peace, The Armed Man, by renowned Welsh composer Karl Jenkins as a centrepiece of the programme. 

Volunteers are needed to join the huge, specially formed choir, one of the biggest ever seen in North Wales. 

They will be accompanied by the acclaimed NEW Sinfonia orchestra that will be making its debut headline appearance at Llangollen Eisteddfod. 

NEW Sinfonia conductor Robert Guy has issued a call for singers of all ages  to sign up for the choir, with rehearsals due to get underway on May 13.  

He said there will be no barriers to taking part in this stirring occasion, adding: “It is not restricted to those with previous concert singing experience. We are opening it up to all comers, all they need is a love of singing.”    

At the heart of the choir will be a group of keen amateur singers who belong to the hugely successful NEW Voices project already established by NEW Sinfonia.  

Robert said: “It’s thanks to the huge success of our NEW Voices project that we already have a core group of enthusiastic amateur singers ready to step up and sing at Llangollen. But we need lots more singers, especially tenors and basses.  

“We will need 200 voices in all so we are urging anyone with a passion for singing and a desire to take part in this momentous event to sign up quickly now.”  

NEW Voices includes refugees who have settled in North Wales following conflicts or persecution in their own countries. They have found solace in singing together and made new friends through the common language of music. 

Among them is a young Ukrainian conductor Polina Horelova who with her young family was forced to flee her home city of Mariupol after the Russians invaded and razed the city.  

It is hoped Polina will conduct the traditional Ukrainian folk piece River Song during the concert of remembrance. 

Robert added: “We are proud that NEW Voices comprises such a wide mix of musical abilities and a range of nationalities. We encompass singers from Wales, Ukraine, Iraq, Iran, Algeria and El Salvador, among other countries.  

“For our White Flower: Into the Light programme we need sopranos, altos, tenors, basses and young voices too; we encourage everyone to come forward.  

“There will be regular rehearsals so people need not fear that they are not good enough or lack confidence. We are here to guide them through the whole wonderful process.” 

Rehearsals will be at two hubs, one in Tŷ Pawb community arts centre, Wrexham, and the other at St Asaph Parish Church. They meet on Saturday mornings from 10am-12 noon. There is also a facility for people to join rehearsals via Zoom video conferencing technology. 

Llangollen Eisteddfod Executive Producer Camilla King said: “We have been thinking about doing something on this theme and scale for some time but it is only this year that the various strands have come together to create what promises to be a magical evening. 

“It is heart-breaking to look back on the Bosnian war and realise that a whole cultural identity was under attack.  

“As well as the relentless murdering of the population, its entire heritage was targeted, artworks destroyed and cultural icons demolished. Now just two decades later very similar monstrosities are happening in Ukraine right now. 

“We wanted to put on a concert to highlight that humanity at its heart is so much better than this. We wanted to reflect the ethos of peace, friendship and cultural diversity which is at the very roots of the International Eisteddfod and is the reason why it was founded in the first place all those years ago in 1947. 

“It will be a thought-provoking, contemplative evening but it will also be uplifting as it highlights important themes of hope, togetherness and overcoming division.”  

Camilla added: “I am expecting demand for tickets will be high as there is no doubt in my mind that this will be a truly unforgettable evening. We invite everyone to come along and enjoy.” 

For more details about the concert at 8pm on Wednesday, July 5, visit: https://international-eisteddfod.co.uk/events/wednesday-evening/ and to sign up for the choir or get more information email at  voices@newsinfonia.org.uk and robert@newsinfonia.org.uk or call Robert Guy on 07725 050510.