WHAT IS ABBEYFEST?

Welcome to Abbeyfest 2010. It’s with great pleasure and delight that I'm able to bring you a wonderful festival this year!

In this, our 13th year, it’s been particularly challenging to get the festival on, due to great difficulty in getting sponsorship. The heart and soul of Abbeyfest are our free events, particularly the Friday night jazz and blues concerts. These are truly outstanding occasions and by the nature of them being free, the need for sponsorship is vital for the festival to take place.

This year the site owners, Office Estates, have once again given Abbeyfest wonderful support, and together with Shepherd and Neame Brewery, Evonprint, Boldscan, Samuel Estates, Virgin Active and Coraider they have gone a long way to making the festival possible.

But we will be relying on the Abbeyfest bars income this year, more than any other, for the festival to cover its full costs. Your support by buying your drinks from them will ensure this much needed income and in turn keep this much loved event alive and kicking for many years to come! Please support the festival by supporting our bars.

Theatre this year is as strong as ever, and our Artistic Director Mark Marlowe has done a superb job of putting together an exciting and vibrant line-up consisting of 16 cracking shows! There are so many great choices that whatever your taste I'm sure we won’t disappoint!

I’m also delighted to welcome back many of our favourite jazz artists for the ever popular series of free Friday night jazz concerts, and I’m excited to welcome a new artist for this year, Noel McKoy.

Also, don’t forget our programme of free weekend lunchtime jazz featuring many favourite jazz standards performed by duos, trios and jazz quartets from around London. Come and experience the vibe for yourself and soak up the atmosphere with some of the hottest jazz talent on the scene (from 1pm – 4pm Saturdays & Sundays).

The blues this year (Blues at the Mills) as always runs over the August Bank Holiday Weekend and as well as the free Friday night concert on the bandstand we get one on the Saturday night as well! A big thank you to Buffalo Bill Smith who has put together a stunning line up of bands and performers which this year will see more than 20 gigs - a real treat for all you Blues lovers out there!

A first for Abbeyfest this year, following the Jazz concerts during August, will see the Colour House Theatre deliver an exciting night of Soul, Funk, Jazz and Boogie classic grooves and Old School Anthems from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s & 90’s. These promise to be superb evenings of dancing, grooving and singing! Brought to you by vinyl crazy DJ Smooth C

To compliment the festival's music theme, a couple of delightful chamber concerts have been programmed (Sunday Evening Music Among Friends).

Our Comedy line up (Slaughterville at the Watermill) is only running in July this year but we have 4 fantastic Edinburgh preview nights. We have an extremely strong line up and all credit to Brett Vincent from Underbelly promotions for putting this together as we bring you a top quality gathering of some of the best comedians on the circuit today, guaranteeing lots of laughter along the way.

After the success of last years open-air Film Short night, in association with the Wimbledon Film Club, this year we have gone all out to bring you a spectacular line up of 6 open-air film nights, with a special Gala film night featuring the wonderful musical Moulin Rouge!

The outstanding Kidsfest is set for Monday 30th August, and will be a truly wonderful and memorable day for all the little ones. This is a day where children take centre stage and like last year the whole day is totally free and one most definitely not to be missed!

Abbeyfest’s continued success is down to more than just me. There are so many people who are integral in getting it on. I would like to thank my wife Helen who is always there for me, to my son Thomas for all his help this year. A very big thank you to Steve Ruby and his team at the 606 Club who from day one have been putting together fantastic Jazz line ups! Thanks to Marc, Tim and Michael and to all the staff at Merton Abbey Mills for all their help and assistance. Thanks to Conrad Thomas of Smooth C Entertainments, to Andrew Wheeler of Crystal Summit Ltd and to all the volunteers and many friends of the festival. Thank you all.

Finally thank you, the public, for supporting Abbeyfest - without you we would not be here! Tell a friend, bring the whole family and enjoy one of London’s best riverside festivals!

......... Peter Wallder Festival Director