Manchester International Festivals

Alex Poot Manchester International Festival Director Tom Bloxham Non-Executive Chair Ruth Mackenzie General Director Dr Jennifer Cleary Higher Education Festival Manager Gorillaz Album: "Demon Days" The above 3 images courtesy of Mark Allan and Manchester International Festival

Manchester International Festival 2007 About the MIF The Manchester International Festival (MIF), was launched on 27 June 2007, to peak in July of that year, and focused on new music by established and new international musicians. This ambitious international festival is believed to have been the first of its kind in the world, and drew on the leading role Manchester holds as a centre of excellence in music and its long association with innovative and new music. Manchester International Festival Directors London-based Alex Poots, Director of Contemporary Arts at English National Opera, was appointed as the Festival Director - he has a respected and well-known reputation as a leading festival programmer, including successful work for the Barbican, the Tate Modern and Tate Britain Galleries in London. Tom Bloxham MBE was appointed as non-executive Chair and Belinda Kidd as Executive Director of the Festival, Tom, joint founder and innovative property developer of Urban Splash Group said at the outset of the event: "The Manchester International Festival will present innovative, groundbreaking new work and I look forward to working closely with Alex (Poots) and his team to deliver a world-class event." Director Alex Poots said: "The Festival exists to bring extraordinary new work by some of the most exciting creative talent from around the world to premiere in Manchester." Ruth Mackenzie OBE began work as General Director of the Manchester International Festival in August 2006. Previously Ruth had been Artistic Director at the Chichester Festival Theatre for 4 years, before working on a consultancy basis for the Arts Council, BBC, Tate and City University. She was awarded her OBE for services to theatre in 1995. Manchester International Festival and the City’s Universities announced the appointment of Dr Jennifer Cleary as the Higher Education Festival Manager in February 2006. Dr Cleary has extensive experience of managing projects between Higher Education institutions, public sector research organisations and industry. The Festival was intended to become a biennial event set to be one of the world's leading international cultural festivals. The Festival was sponsored by both corporate companies and public sector organisations who underwrote the huge cost of creating a commissioning festival. Music hitmakers 'Gorillaz' performed a series of five shows in Manchester, to kick-off and promote the festival of entertainment. Manchester City Council's Press Release Festival Director Appointed Gorillaz website Back to Top

World Premieres
World premieres in the 2007 Festival included: Monkey: Journey to the West, a new opera directed by Chen Shi Zheng with music by Damon Albarn and design by Jamie Hewlett, Il Tempo del Postino, a group show by 15 of the world's leading contemporary artists including Matthew Barney, Tacita Dean, Douglas Gordon and Pierre Huyghe, new theatre productions including a site-specific work by Stewart Lee and Johnny Vegas, debates, food by Heston Blumenthal and an international music series that featured Lou Reed, Kanye West, PJ Harvey, The Gossip and The Whip.

Participating Artists
Artists who participated in the 2007 Manchester International Festival (* denotes artists commissioned to create new work):

2ManyDJs, Carlos Acosta (dancer), Doug Aikten* (artist), Damon Albarn* (composer), Erol Alkan (DJ), Kevin Bales (historian), Matthew Barney* (artist), Neil Bartlett* (director), BBC Philharmonic, Jonathan Bepler* (composer), Heston Blumenthal* (chef), Victoria Borisova-Ollas* (composer), Bert Butler (musician), Bushwacka (DJ), Mira Calix* (composer), Chen Shi-Zheng* (director), Carl Cox (DJ), Merce Cunningham (dancer), Adam Curtis (writer), Tacita Dean* (artist), Trisha Donnelly* (artist), Mark Elder (conductor), Olafur Eliasson* (artist), Fatboy Slim (DJ), Faulty Optic* Theatre Company, Mike Figgis* (director), Liam Gillick* (artist), Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster* (artist), Paul Gilroy (economist), Douglas Gordon* (artist), Todd Graft* (VJ), Peter Guinness (actor), Greg Hall* (filmmaker), Halle Orchestra, Happy Mondays, PJ Harvey (musician), Carsten Holler* (artist), Jamie Hewlett* (designer), Pierre Huyghe* (artist), Bert Jansch, (musician), Edward Kemp* (librettist), Koo Jeong-A* (artist), Stewart Lee* (writer), Arto Lindsay* (composer), Colin Matthews (composer), Steve McQueen* (artist), New Young Pony Club, Hans Ulrich Obrist* (curator), Ojos de Brujo, William Orbit* (composer), Beth Orton (musician), Layo Paskin* (DJ & Music Director), Lies Pauwels* (director), Tariq Ramadan (academic), Lou Reed (musician), Mikhail Rudy (pianist), Philippe Parreno* (artist), Sasha (DJ), Anri Sala* (artist), Tino Sehgal* (artist), Peter Sellars (director), June Tabor (singer), The Blue Nile, The Fall, The Gossip, The Horrors, The Whip, Rirkrit Tiravanija* (artist), Polly Toynbee (writer), Johnny Vegas* (actor), Kanye West (musician), Tony Wilson (journalist & producer).

Artistic Advisors: David Aukin, Mark Elder and Michael Morris

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Manchester International Festival 2009

2 – 19 July 2009

Manchester International Festival is the world’s first festival of new work and it takes place biennially, in Manchester, UK. The 2009 festival will maintain its high calibre organisational management, and officials include:

Alex Poots – Festival Director
Simon Mellor – General Director
Christine Cort – Associate Director
(Ruth Mackenzie – no longer works for the Festival)

What the Papers said:

‘Manchester is the beating cultural heart of Britain’
The Observer July 2007

‘Manchester is drawing on a rich cultural tradition, from the Hallé to Oasis’. The Daily Telegraph Jan 2007.

‘Anything that celebrates adventure, newness, intellectualism, radicalism has to be in Manchester. The whole city is about that and this – the Festival – is the kind of thing that suits it’ .
Paul Morley, BBC2 Newsnight Review – special live broadcast from the Festival .

A number of the productions created for the 2007 Festival are now touring internationally, while the festival team focus on the 2009 Festival, which takes place in Manchester, Thursday 2 – Sunday 19 July 2009.

The first commissions will be announced in October 2008, with the entire Festival programme revealed early 2009. Visit our website and sign up to our free e-newsletter for sneak previews: www.mif.co.uk .

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