Festival goers in North Wales are set for a wild welcome – from a life-size, one-ton mountain gorilla and an 8ft tall grizzly bear.
The striking sculptures will greet visitors at the North Wales International Music Festival after being loaned by care organisation Pendine Park, the event’s headline sponsors.
Pendine is headed by keen conservationist Mario Kreft MBE who became a big fan of gorillas during trips to Africa with his wife, Gill.
Mario will share stories of their adventures in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo during a special talk entitled Mario in the Mist at St Asaph Parish Church at 1pm on Friday, September 18.
The title is a nod to Gorillas In The Mist, the film of the life of the late Dian Fossey, played by Hollywood A-lister Sigourney Weaver, who was murdered in Rwanda in 1985 by wildlife poachers.
The theme also chimes with the overall theme of this year’s festival, Macrocosm: Music and Conservation and honours and explores the close ties that exist between music and the natural environment.
Mario and Gill’s Africa trips inspired Pendine Park garden team member and chainsaw artist Paul Morris.
As a result, he created the sculpture of the gorilla from a dead maple tree from Pendine’s extensive gardens in Wrexham while he used the trunk of a Sycamore tree that had been blown down to make the huge grizzly bear.
The gorilla will take pride of place at St Asaph Parish Church while the bear will loom large in the transept at the festival’s main venue, St Asaph Cathedral.
The couple are long-time backers of the festival via the Pendine Arts and Community Trust which they set up to support community and arts activities.
Mario was born in Durban, in South Africa, the son of Slovenian circus lion and bear tamer Franz Kreft and his Rhyl-born wife, Pamela, and christened in the circus’s Big Top with a clown as godfather, Charlie Bale.
He said: “My father had a lion and bear act and he and my mum travelled the world with the circus while I and my brothers were brought up in the Vale of Clwyd by our grandparents.
“I always had a love of animals as a result and in the Seventies I was inspired by David Attenborough’s filming with gorillas and that was when I first thought that I really had to go and see these wonderful creatures.
“I will talk about the circus and the animals including the bears and lions because my dad had a great affinity with them and was very kind to them but the world was very different then.
“In the last 20 years I have had marvellous opportunities to visit Africa many times and have met gorillas including the rare Western Lowland Gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“We’ve had some wonderful experiences – when you look into a gorilla’s eyes they say you can see your soul and there’s certainly something magical about being within a few feet of these fantastic creatures.
“They are a lot like us in many ways – they live in small family groups and when you see them in the wild they are so like humans.
“The mountain gorillas are very famous through the work of Dian Fossey and the film of her life.
“They’re also a lot nicer than chimpanzees which are more like humans in that they can be very nice or very unpleasant.”
Mario and Gill haven’t been back to Africa since the Covid epidemic but hope to return next year.
He said: “We’re planning to visit Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda in 2027 and are especially looking forward to Tanzania to the area where H M Stanley met David Livingstone – Stanley was born in Denbigh where we live and was raised in the workhouse in St Asaph.
“I’m dedicating the talk to a good friend, Ian Baker, who sadly passed away recently. He had visited Rwanda and would wax lyrical about it which was what inspired Gill and I.”
The festival, which runs from Thursday, September 10, to Saturday, September 19, and features concerts, workshops and free fringe events, has been made possible thanks to main grant funders the Arts Council of Wales, Colwinston Charitable Trust and PACT as the headline sponsors.
Other partners are Scops Arts Trust, Tŷ Cerdd, St Asaph City Council and Salisburys Chartered Accountants.
Global opera star Sir Bryn Terfel will headline the opening concert on September 10, performing a selection of his favourite songs and sharing stories from his remarkable career.
Among the other highlights is the Pendine Young Musician of Wales Grand Final on Wednesday, September 16.
The popular competition returns with young musicians from throughout Wales competing for the £4,000 prize money and Pendine Trophy.
On Friday, September 11, The Gesualdo Six, one of Britain’s leading a cappella groups will perform music from their latest album, The Wishing Tree.
Taking centre stage the following evening will be the Fusion Band featuring 12 youngsters from the North Wales Music Cooperative.
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Tianyi Lu and harpist Alis Huws will perform the premiere of a harp concerto composed by Cameron Biles-Liddell as well as Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending and Beethoven’s Sixth symphony.
The festival closes with a choral concert featuring two choirs, Anglesey-based Encôr and Hen Nodiant from Cardiff.
Both are long-time rivals who have only ever met in competition at the National Eisteddfod and they will unite in song for the very first time.
All fringe events are free with no booking required. Tickets and further details about the festival concert programme are available online at https://nwimf.com. Tickets are also available from Cathedral Frames, St Asaph – 07471 318723 (Weds – Fri, 10 – 4) and Theatr Clwyd – 01352 344101 (Mon – Sat, 10 – 6).
