Chief Creative and Content Officer, Graeme Farrow looks back on this year's Llais, our international arts festival.

At 5pm on a Sunday afternoon, Wales Millennium Centre became a temple filled with songs born of slavery that promise salvation. During Le Gateau Chocolat’s Spirituals - created and performed with Allyson Devenish and David McAlmont - there was a homily, a lament, a sermon. For the offering, we were asked to put something of ourselves into the collection box. Everyone did it. Le Gateau Chocolat read some out loud. We were the congregation, not an audience. Here is the festival as a place of communion and connection.

Between 8-13 October, in a city and a country that has exported so many great voices to the world, Wales Millenium Centre celebrated the third instalment of Llais (Welsh for ‘Voice’) - the annual international arts festival inspired by the one instrument we all share. It is a cornerstone of a new 3-week flagship Cardiff Music City Festival.

Venues and spaces reverberated to a glorious cacophony of global voices - from a tribute to David Crosby that captured the cosmic harmonies of Laurel Canyon circa 1971, to the choral majesty of Soviet-era Bulgarian sensation Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, to urgent indie voices such as Squid and Geordie Greep and visionary interpreters of ancient traditions including Lisa O’Neill, Ganavya, Iarla Ó Lionáird and The Breath. 

In a rare UK appearance, US all-female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock also held communion, conducting the audience in call and response, singing and clapping along to songs from 50 years of soul and activism. Next door, we revelled in 50 years and more of local cultural history as voices old and new relived the heady days of the Cardiff Bay jazz scene from which Shirley Bassey erupted. We ventured through Somali funk with Sahra Halgan, through the Tuareg desert rock of Bombino, savoured the honeyed tones of Joan As Police Woman and ended up in a thrilling, chaotic finale of spoken word, poetry, and comedy including Sara Pascoe, Russell Tovey, Nadine Shah, Hollie McNish, Michel Pedersen, Joelle Taylor and Lady Leshurr.

Being the Creative Director of this 7 acre, five venue arts centre is both a privilege and a challenge. As we approach our 20th anniversary, at a time of shrinking funding and rising bills, we find ourselves reflecting deeply on the role of this building and who it serves. As we grapple with these questions, this year’s Llais offered some powerful answers. 

Llais is a curated festival that takes audiences to places the algorithm won’t, introducing Cardiff audiences to artists they wouldn’t otherwise get to see, and it gives artists the opportunity to perform in a city which wouldn’t otherwise be financially viable, and/or realise projects that couldn’t happen elsewhere. 

Over five thrilling days, it became clear that in the same way that our building is far more than the sum of its halls, venues and spaces, Llais is far more than a collection of concerts. It's a convening place for artists and audiences alike, a coming-together and sharing of voices. Llais embodies Gwyneth Lewis’ poem which adorns the copper facade of Wales Millennium Centre - ‘In These Stones Horizons Sing’. 

Our dream is for a place of cultural encounter, from which spring the serendipitous moments of connection made possible when so many talented and generous spirits gather in one place.

Speaking onstage of his experience of rehearsing with Mike Scott, The Staves, Liam Ó Maonlaí, Kris Drever, Zervas & Pepper and an allstar band led by Kate St John ahead of the first-ever live performance of David Crosby’s cosmic masterpiece ‘If I Could Only Remember My Name’, Liam Ó Maonlaí summed it up perfectly: 

Ganavya, the supernaturally talented singer steeped in the Carnatic tradition of her Tamil heritage, sang a sean-nós song she had rehearsed to none other than Iarla Ó Lionáird, one of the greatest exponents of this Irish tradition.  

The world premiere of Gwen Siôn’s Llwch a Lechi ‘Dust & Slate’ was a wildly ambitious visionary work channelling the voice of a land and its people. It mixed field recordings made on the mountainsides of north Wales, epic archive footage of slate mining in the early years of the 20th century, self-made instruments fashioned from shards of slate and gnarled branches of yew, a 10-piece orchestra and a male voice quarry choir. 

In Gwen’s own words, the Llais commission was transformative to her as a composer, enabling her to try out new ways of working and scale up her ideas. 

For the artist, the opportunity to realise a dream. For audiences, a place to witness the birth of something completely new by an artist at a pivotal moment in her career. 

If ever there were any doubt about what festivals are for, or what purpose Wales Millennium Centre serves as we look toward its future, we couldn’t put it any better than Rogue Jones, the winners of the 2023 Wales Music Prize who performed at Llais.

The last word, however, belongs to Australian singer-songwriter Gina Williams, who returned to Cardiff—her home away from home—alongside her partner Guy Ghouse. They were serenaded by 150 primary school children, all singing in Gina’s native Noongar language, a tongue spoken by only 400 people in the world. For Gina, this was a profound moment of cultural connection. As she poignantly put it: