Although the summer celebrations of next year’s festival may seem a world away, we’d just like to let you know that we’ve confirmed the dates for 2009: Friday July 24th – Saturday August 1st, so please mark your diaries and we’ll fill you in with highlights as they get firmed up over the next few months.

One thing you can look forward to is the launch of mjf originals – our ground-breaking series of major new works commissioned especially for the festival. We’ve been working on it over the past few months, and with extra funds from Arts Council England, we’ll be presenting what we’re sure will be some of the most exciting, intriguing and individual music yet to come from the north west’s inspiring and inspired body of musicians. And if you’re one of them, we want to hear from you!

Applications are now being invited from anyone wishing to propose a new piece of work for 2009. You’ll need to fill in the application form – available from our website – and you’ll also want to read through our Policy for Commissioning New Work to help you focus your ideas. These will be big projects, and they need to be quite well thought through, so the form is more detailed than the standard mjf submission form. The deadline for returning the ‘mjf originals’ form to us is Friday 12th December.

We’ll still be accepting mjf submissions for the rest of the festival programme in the normal way. The form is also on the mjf website, and the deadline for the rest of the festival programme is Friday 6th February 2009 . You can enter proposals for both the ‘mjf originals’ scheme and the regular submissions if you wish.

In the meantime, allow us to be amongst the first to offer you best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.