PART ONE
I just love the summer, don’t you? It started with a big bang for me last weekend as LAZZMATAZZ 2019 hit the historic town of Llandovery, for three days of music, performance poetry, storytelling and literature. The festival was opened by the Mayor of Llandovery, Louise Wride.
Now in its fifth year, the festival which is a platform for new talent was busier than ever with over 25 acts on the main stage, Fringe Events, Literature Festival and Book Fayre, and Craft Market.
There really was something for everybody and I am really proud of our small team that made it all happen. The venue for the festival is the Castle Hotel in Llandovery, and the hospitality for festival goers was incredible.
We were lucky for a little while on Friday as the weather held and all was outside on our main stage. Saturday a day of sun and everything was grand until about eight in the evening when the heavens opened.
Cariad our, stage management team are based in Wales, they know rain! Within fifteen minutes they had moved the desk, lights and pa and the Glass Dolls continued their set on our Ballroom Stage.
Excellent work guys. The sad thing is, Cariad moved from inside to out and back, four times over the weekend. But this is Wales and Cariad are an excellent stage crew. ‘Impressive’ I hear you say, it was! The Welsh Connections Lazzmatazz Songwriting Competition 2019 had seven finalists this year and was won by Erin Lancaster.
The judges had a dreadful time trying to decide on ‘runner up’ and in the end, announced ‘joint runners up’.
They are Christian Aaron Perry and Tim Greenwood, both of whom passionately performed, stunning our judges.
We held the Tim Williams Award for Performance Poetry on the Sunday with five finalists.
In this competition historically, we have only awarded a first prize. This year there was a clear winner and Trudi Petersen took the award home. But for the first time this year, the judges awarded ‘highly commended’ to David Thorpe a local poet from Llandovery.
