Christopher BarrettFollowing its debut last year, Neapolitan Music’s Kite Festival (cap. 8,000) is set to return to Oxfordshire’s Kirtlington Park on 9-11 June 2023 with a line-up of performers and speakers across seven stages including Hot Chip, Candi Staton, Dylan Jones and Toussaint Douglass.
Ciro Romano’s Neapolitan Music, which also promotes events including the 23,000-capacity Love Supreme Jazz Festival, teamed with production company U-Live, James Harding’s long-read editorial platform Tortoise Media and indie label Heavenly Recordings to launch the “music and ideas” festival last year.
The 2023 event will again focus on combining literature, music, politics, art, culture, and comedy. The three-day greenfield camping festival will also see performances from acts including Suede and Baxter Dury, percussionist Sarathy Korwar, DJs Sofia Kourtesis and David Holmes, and debate led by former editor of GQ and chair of London Fashion Week Men’s Dylan Jones, award-winning author Max Porter, and Miki Berenyi whose recently published memoir was declared Rough Trade’s Book of the Year 2022.
Festival director Ciro Romano said, “Ideas and music have always co-existed; they are linked in our history, but, for the most part, there has been a clear dividing line between ideas/literary festivals and music festival. So, we are thrilled to have developed a new greenfield festival that puts music and ideas on an equal footing and be back again.”