Friday 19 July

It’s a rare thing that musicians sound better live than they do on Spotify. But Florence Welch sings a note perfect set – even when jumping up and down like a pogo stick, whirling and spinning, or sprinting along the front of the stage to meet fans.

The Montreal Jazz Festival is vast. It attracts an audience of between 1.5 and 2 million people over its 12 nights. It has been estimated to bring the city more revenue than the Canadian Grand Prix.

As ever theartsdesk’s Glastonbury report arrives after all other media coverage. Despite management pressure Caspar Gomez refuses earlier deadlines. He told Editorial, “The press tent is like an office, a place of work, full of laptops and coffee. Who needs that?” His annual saga doesn’t attempt to compete with Tweeted micro-reviews or ever-available BBC iPlayer festival highlights. It takes a winding road, explores the scenery, the musical-chemical highs and body-worn lows, capturing in fuller form than anywhere else a most singular plunge into Glastonbury 2019.

The festival Summer Music in City Churches is in only its second year, filling a gap left by the demise of the long-running City of London Festival.

Download is Britain’s premier metal festival, attended by all ages. Theartsdesk’s three person team offer up their reviews of one day each, as they navigated their way between Eighties hair metal, contemporary Viking metal and any other metal you might care to imagine…

Friday 14^th June

By Ellie Porter

Only those who’ve just popped in from an early 20^th century Tennessee cotton field will have recently observed more pairs of dungarees in one place than at Red Rooster. It’s a festival that prides itself on a rich diet of Americana alongside a defiantly retro aesthetic.

With thousands of people trooping in to see headliners including The Strokes, Bring Me the Horizon, Mumford and Sons and, tonight, Bon Iver, this corner of London’s beautiful Victoria Park has become a bit of a dustbowl – and the dust certainly gets kicked up as the 10-day festival concludes.

There was a special celebratory aura to the start of Swedish city Gothenburg's first Point Festival. Earlier in the week its Symphony Orchestra's Chief Conductor, electrifying Finn Santtu-Matias Rouvali, had not only announced a renewed contract there but also been appointed to the same position with our own Philharmonia Orchestra, to succeed Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Now going for over a dozen years, ever-busier since Live Nation took over its parent company in 2015, The Great Escape Festival is the annual multi-venue band showcase and music conference which sees Brighton swamped with music biz sorts.