IN a change to its traditional format and timings, Gregynog Festival 2018 features a series of collaborations led by artistic director Dr Rhian Davies, including events in Aberystwyth.

This year’s festival will commemorate the centenary of the death, on 7 September 1918, of the outstanding Welsh composer, singer and pianist Morfydd Owen (1891-1918).

Rhian is the leading authority on Morfydd, who was the subject of her doctorate and pictorial biography Never So Pure a Sight/Yr Eneth Ddisglair Annwyl.

The commemorations comprise a series of performances, talks, exhibitions and special events in locations central to the composer’s life in Wales and London.

Some have already taken place, such as the BBC Proms on 20 July when the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Thomas Søndergård, played Morfydd’s Nocturne at the Royal Albert Hall.

Rhian will give centenary lectures about Morfydd’s life and work and one of these will take place at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, on Tuesday, 11 September, at 1pm.

Rhian will consider the legacy of the composer, whose history she began researching at Aberystwyth in 1982, and place her achievement in the context of other Welsh women musicians from the 14th century onwards. An exhibition of the composer’s manuscripts and memorabilia will also be displayed.

As well as being a composer, Morfydd was a pioneer ethnomusicologist, transcribing and arranging Welsh folk songs from phonograph recordings made by Ruth Herbert Lewis.

The Welsh Folk Song Society invited Rhian to give the Amy Parry-Williams Memorial Lecture at the National Eisteddfod about this lesser-known aspect of Morfydd’s work, and her presentation at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay on 7 August was illustrated by the leading folksingers Siân James and Steffan Rhys Hughes.

The event will also be repeated in Llanbrynmair, Morfydd’s Montgomeryshire family seat from which she took her bardic name Llwyn-Owen, on 29 September, following a week of community concerts across Gregynog Festival’s Powys heartland by the harpist Llywelyn Ifan Jones, including Capel Pontcadfan, Llangadfan on 23 September and Glanhafren Market Hall, Newtown on 25 September.

A major performance of Morfydd’s music will conclude the season.

Philomusica of Aberystwyth, conducted by David Russell Hulme, will play her orchestral Nocturne in the Great Hall of Aberystwyth Arts Centre on 8 December.

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