MUSIC · NATURE · PEOPLE
50 YEARS OF VENDSYSSEL FESTIVAL
by Tore Mortensen – with personal contributions from a number of the festival’s key participants

© Tore Mortensen 2020
ISBN: 978-87-972625-0-4

Published by the Board of Vendsyssel Festival
Print run: 1,200 copies
Typesetting and layout: Allan Hartmann Johansen, Omedia Grafisk
Printing: Vendia Grafisk
1st edition, 1st printing, 169 pages

Includes 2 CDs with recordings from concerts

With its 50–60 concerts every summer, Vendsyssel Festival is one of Europe’s largest and most enduring music festivals. This is all the more impressive considering that the festival is – and always has been – run and organized entirely by volunteer, unpaid work.

In 2020/21, Vendsyssel Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary, and this book tells the story of the festival’s vision, its modest beginnings, and its development over the following 50 years.

It is a success story, though one that also includes accounts of conflicts and bitter disputes. But above all, it is a story about the unique interplay between the music, the beautiful North Jutland landscape, and the people – the musicians as well as the loyal audience – that makes Vendsyssel Festival such a distinctive cultural institution.

The Board of Vendsyssel Festival holds an extensive collection of concert recordings from the years 1971 to 2019. The earliest recordings were created through a collaboration between Henning Kristensen, parish priest at Brønderslev Church, and Gorm Back Pedersen, organist at St. Catharine’s Church in Hjørring and long-standing member of the Vendsyssel Festival Board. The subsequent recordings from the past 23 years come from DR’s broadcasts of the concerts. It is recordings from these two collections that can be heard on the accompanying CDs.

The book costs DKK 100 including 2 CDs – available at all Vendsyssel Festival concerts – or by contacting Vendsyssel Festival (see under the page “CONTACT”).