LATITUDE AT 20
Kirsty Taylor
the piano.“ I think it might be the only ever impromptu solo Thom York performance,” says Benn.“ He brought his own piano from his front room to perform on it.”
With the Latitude offering reflecting Benn’ s broad taste that reaches way beyond contemporary music, among the many other festival highlights for the promoter was the arrival of celebrated Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang to the Waterfront Stage on a gondola.
“ I wanted to put world-class international classical artists, who would ordinarily only play the Albert Hall or the Royal Festival Hall, at Latitude. I wanted them to be in a festival field, and I wanted them to be available to the Latitude audience, which had demonstrated to me that that ' s who they also wanted to see.”
A world of discovery
Kirsty Taylor, Latitude ' s arts curator, is responsible for programming arts performances, comedy, spoken word, theatre and dance at the event. She started working on Latitude in 2014 as an assistant to Harrison, who had worked with Benn to launch the festival 20 years ago. She played a key role in bringing the likes of theatre and literature successfully to life in the fields of Henham Park alongside the contemporary music.
In 2019, Taylor took over from Harrison and has since been instrumental in programming one of the broadest arts offerings of any festival anywhere. It was that breadth of offering, established by Harrison, that encouraged
Taylor to veer off her career path in publishing and into the Suffolk fields.
“ I read an interview with Tania about the festival and realised it was an event that involved staging everything I like in one place,” she says.“ I may have never been down the front of a gig, but I go to the theatre, I go to comedy, I love to read, and so I thought‘ this is a festival for me’.”
Among the many things Taylor is looking forward to bringing to life at this year’ s Latitude Festival is the first Debut Fiction series. Hosted by Red Magazine ' s literary editor Sarah Gwonyoma, the series spotlights seven new authors and their literary debuts on the Bookshop stage.
“ With my background having been in publishing, it feels personally like a full circle moment,” she says.“ Debut fiction is a really hard thing to place as publishers and publicists, so it ' s incredible to have
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