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Aberdeen’s International Youth Festival gears up to announce biggest ever line-up

Organisers at Aberdeen International Youth Festival are gearing up to launch one of its biggest and best line-ups in the festival’s history.

The annual festival, which runs between July 27 and August 6 this year, has attracted an unprecedented number of applications from international youth acts keen to perform at the event.

More than 40 national and international companies have been confirmed to perform during this year’s event, as some of the world’s brightest up and coming stage, musical and dance stars line up to perform at the UK’s biggest celebrations youth art.

In response to public demand, tickets for some of the festival’s most popular shows have already gone on sale.

Festival organisers have also scheduled two huge new gala shows to take place because many of the festival’s most popular shows sold out last year.

The two new big-scale events scheduled exclusively for this year are a full evening of musical theatre that will feature the Broadway stars of tomorrow singing some of the genre’s best-loved hits and a matinee performance of the International Variety Gala.

The festival’s artistic director and CEO, Stewart Aitken, said: “This year we have already seen an incredible response to the shows that are currently on sale. We are delighted that once again we can deliver a truly world class arts festival for Aberdeen and Scottish audiences to enjoy. Each year we are inundated with more and more requests from some of the world’s top young International dance, orchestral, theatre and music companies asking to perform at AIYF. This means we can maintain the very high calibre of acts that perform during the festival each year and that the line-up is improving year on year.”

Despite the complete festival line-up still being kept under wraps, tickets are selling fast for the Galas which - alongside other hotly-anticipated festival events - have been placed on sale ahead of the official launch in around three weeks time, when a brand new festival website is also due to go live.

Events in this elite category include a specially crafted anniversary performance by the critically-acclaimed Singapore National Youth Orchestra, celebrating their tenth birthday this year.

AIYF is now in its 39th year and more than 1,000 performers from Scotland and around the globe will descend on Aberdeen. There are over 100 shows programmed at some of the city centre’s best-loved venues such as HMT, the Music Hall, Lemontree and Aberdeen Arts Centre.

Some shows will remain free of charge or with family discounts available and a full educational programme of workshops and master-classes in the arts will run alongside the main festival schedule.

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