MANCHESTER.- Internationally acclaimed artists from over 20 countries present 20 UK and world premieres for the Manchester International Festival (MIF 19) which opened on 4 July and runs until 21 July 2019, the world’s first festival of original, new work and special events, staged every two years in Manchester.

Highlights include:

• Yoko Ono opens MIF19 with BELLS FOR PEACE, a mass-participatory artwork which invites thousands of people to ring and sing out for peace

• Legendary filmmaker David Lynch takes over HOME for the duration of the Festival with his largest UK exhibition of visual art to date, alongside film screenings, Lynch-inspired gigs and more

• Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei-Armah collaborate for the first time on Tree, a journey into the soul and spirit of contemporary South Africa which blends music, drama and dance

• The legacy of Nico, the legendary Velvet Underground singer and muse, is celebrated in The Nico Project, a theatrical immersion into her sound and identity from Maxine Peake and Sarah Frankcom

• Director Leo Warner, choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Rambert present Invisible Cities, a visually stunning collaboration inspired by the renowned 1972 novel and adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti

• Grime star Skepta takes us beyond the music gig to present DYSTOPIA987, a futuristic take on the history of rave culture at a secret Manchester location

• Philip Glass and Phelim McDermott team up for their most personal collaboration yet: Tao of Glass, a meditation on life, death and wisdom

• The world premiere of a major two-part commission to mark the 200th anniversary of Peterloo, a landmark in Manchester’s history, including a new work by composer Emily Howard and poet Michael Symmons Roberts, performed by the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Singers and three Hallé choirs

• Adam Thirlwell, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rem Koolhaas construct an extraordinary language laboratory featuring new work by Patrick Chamoiseau, Sayaka Murata, Adania Shibli, Sjón, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Dubravka Ugrešić and Alejandro Zambra

• Janelle Monáe, Abida Parveen, Chrysta Bell and an all-female line-up of electronic artists curated by Mary Anne Hobbs lead MIF19’s music programme

• Tania Bruguera invites audiences to join her School of Integration at Manchester Art Gallery

• The half-forgotten history of Ghana, is explored in Parliament of Ghosts, a major installation from acclaimed Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama at the Whitworth

Following the success of MIF17’s award-winning What Is the City But the People?, MIF19 opened with Yoko Ono’s new mass-participatory event BELLS FOR PEACE, a gathering of thousands of people coming together to ring and sing out for peace in Cathedral Gardens, in the heart of the city. 50 years after her early bed-in collaborations with John Lennon, this is a major new commission from an artist who has boldly communicated her commitment to social justice throughout her career.

Continuing MIF’s innovative use of the city’s found spaces, Invisible Cities sees Leo Warner of 59 Productions (War Horse, David Bowie Is), acclaimed choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, writer Lolita Chakrabarti, Rambert dance company and an all-star creative team, collaborate for the first time on a wholly original mix of theatre, choreography, music, architectural design and projection mapping created for Mayfield, Manchester’s iconic former railway depot. Inspired by the renowned 1972 novel, which is centred on the relationship between Kublai Khan and explorer Marco Polo, this extraordinary new, site-specific work reimagines the possibilities of live performance.

Also working together for the first time, Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Tree is the story of a young man on a journey of healing, told through dance, music and film – the fulfilment of the pair’s long-held ambition to make a piece of work together inspired by South Africa. Directed by Kwei-Armah, with music inspired by Elba’s album Mi Mandela, Tree is an exhilarating show about identity, family and belonging.

Further continuing the Festival’s tradition of creative partnerships: composer Philip Glass and actor-director Phelim McDermott have collaborated on acclaimed opera productions in London, New York and beyond, but Tao of Glass is their most personal project yet. Inspired by a dream, this world premiere marries meditations on life, death and wisdom with ten brand new pieces of music from Glass, presented in the round by McDermott, with an ensemble of musicians and puppeteers.

In The Nico Project at The Stoller Hall Maxine Peake, Sarah Frankcom, and an all-female creative team, pay tribute to the legendary musician with a stirring theatrical immersion into Nico’s sound and identity, inspired by her stark, bleak and beautiful 1968 album The Marble Index. With text by award-winning playwright EV Crowe and music by acclaimed composer Anna Clyne, The Nico Project brings us closer to the ghosts that haunted Nico and celebrates the potency of female creativity in a field dominated by men.

Grime star Skepta’s DYSTOPIA987 steps beyond the live music experience, reimagining the rave culture of the past in an uncertain future with a series of intimate and immersive events held in a secret Manchester location. Skepta will perform along with guest appearances from hand-picked performers, DJs, and a wealth of new technology inhabiting a hidden netherworld.

The legendary David Lynch is taking over HOME for the duration of MIF19. In the gallery, My Head Is Disconnected is the first major UK exhibition of his large-scale paintings, drawings and sculpture. In the theatre, Lynch collaborator Chrysta Bell will host a one-off series of live shows from Lynch-inspired musicians, while the cinema will feature screenings of his classic movies, short films, conversations and more.

At Manchester Art Gallery Tania Bruguera invites audiences to join her School of Integration and consider why integration is always the responsibility of the immigrant in a powerful, provocative and inspiring new work. Local people originally from countries around the world will give free classes on a curriculum that includes languages, culture, ethics, politics, economics and many other forms of knowledge in a new shared learning experience.

At the Whitworth, the half-forgotten history of Ghana is explored in Parliament of Ghosts, a major installation from artist Ibrahim Mahama. This new commission for MIF19 features abandoned train parts, documents from governmental archives and a haunting assemblage of lost objects, rescued and repurposed to form a vast parliamentary chamber in the heart of the gallery.

In dance, acclaimed American choreographer Trajal Harrell places Tennessee Williams’ Maggie the Cat centre-stage in his magnetic new dance work – a provocative fusion of high art and pop culture, with multiple influences ranging from ancient Greek theatre to the Harlem voguing underground, and a soundtrack that crosses genres, from electro and pop to classical music.

Claire Cunningham’s Thank You Very Much looks at identity through the prism of the Elvis tribute artist as the choreographer and her ensemble of leading disabled performers take to the floor in witty and revealing fashion in a new dance work which takes apart the myth of how bodies should be and have been trained to be.

Women pushing the boundaries of music are a highlight of the MIF19 programme, including an exclusive show from Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, producer and actress Janelle Monáe on the opening night of MIF19 and a unique collaboration between Sufi superstar Abida Parveen and Kathak dancer Nahid Siddiqui. For Queens of the Electronic Underground Mary Anne Hobbs (BBC Radio 6 Music) brings together five of the most exciting electronic acts for an evening of bleeding-edge sounds and breath-taking visuals: Jlin, Holly Herndon, Aïsha Devi ft. MFO, Klara Lewis and Katie Gately.

Studio Créole sees Adam Thirlwell and Hans Ulrich Obrist construct an intimate language laboratory, specially designed by Rem Koolhaas and Cookies, to present new stories by Patrick Chamoiseau, Sayaka Murata, Adania Shibli, Sjón, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Dubravka Ugrešić and Alejandro Zambra – written for MIF19 and read live by their authors while simultaneously translated and interpreted into performance.

Language is also a key preoccupation of acclaimed Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s immersive installation Atmospheric Memory, a series of ‘Atmospheric Machines’ that attempt to ‘materialise sound’ – inspired by computing pioneer Charles Babbage’s proposal that the air is a ‘vast library’ holding every word ever spoken – in a fascinating fusion of daring artwork and sensory performance.

Manchester’s own history is centre-stage in The Anvil: An Elegy for Peterloo, which marks the landmark 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre in a major two-part commission. ANU, one of Europe’s most daring theatre companies, will take to the streets for a day-long series of immersive performances inspired by the stories of those who died at St Peter’s Field. The evening sees the world premiere of a major new musical work by composer Emily Howard and poet Michael Symmons Roberts, performed by the BBC Philharmonic and a massed chorus featuring the BBC Singers and three Hallé choirs.

The places and spaces of the city become the stage for two immersive works: The Berlin-based company Rimini Protokoll’s Utopolis Manchester is a visionary new work that transforms our view of the city as we discover the people and places that create Manchester’s daily life, in a journey inspired by Thomas More’s Utopia. The Manchester cholera epidemic of the 1830s is the unlikely inspiration for The Drunk Pandemic, the first major UK project by Chim↑Pom from Tokyo, one of the world’s most playful and provocative art collectives, who come to MIF19 at the invitation of Contact Young Curators.

Animals of Manchester (including HUMANZ) imagines what life might be like if animals lived with us not as our pets but as our peers in an interactive Live Art experience created by Hamburg-based artist Sibylle Peters (Theatre of Research) and London’s Live Art Development Agency (LADA), featuring installations, performances and encounters from artists, including Joshua Sofaer and Marcus Coates. Elsewhere, for families, Studio ORKA’s Tuesday, is a beautifully staged exploration of the milestones of life in a Grade I-listed Victorian church in Salford.

With MIF set to operate and create the artistic programme for The Factory, the landmark cultural space being developed in the city, several MIF19 works are presented as pre-Factory events, offering a preview of the range and calibre of work planned.

Ivo van Hove, one of the world’s most acclaimed directors, brings his Internationaal Theater Amsterdam ensemble to Manchester to perform The Fountainhead, a gripping adaptation of Ayn Rand’s uncompromising 20th-century classic, which has been a major inspiration for libertarian politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. This passionate hymn to individualism is presented alongside another project directed by Van Hove, Re:Creating Europe, which considers the notion of Europe through some of the speeches and texts that have shaped, traced and defined its history.

Creative pioneer Laurie Anderson will present To The Moon, an expanded virtual reality work she is developing with the artist Hsin-Chien Huang, featuring a VR experience and an immersive installation. Cape Town-born artist Kemang Wa Lehulere, will be joining us for a Festival-long residency at Manchester Central Library, exploring the city and its libraries as he begins researching and creating a future Festival commission.

Sir Mark Elder, Musical Director of the Hallé, and Johan Simons, the acclaimed Dutch theatre director, are also developing a new work for The Factory, inspired by composer Dimitri Shostakovich and the writer Vasily Grossman. They will be discussing this new work before a performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, Leningrad.

Other highlights include a new collaboration between Brooklyn’s Reggie ‘Regg Roc’ Gray (FlexN Manchester at MIF15) and Manchester-based spoken word collective Young Identity; a new iteration of Karl Hyde’s MIF17 hit Manchester Street Poem; and a series of intimate discussions and public debates under the banner of Interdependence, the ideas strand of MIF’s public programme.

John McGrath, MIF Artistic Director and Chief Executive says: “At MIF19 we see a whole host of artists looking to the future – some with hope, some with imagination and some with concern. We never impose themes on the artists we work with, but it’s striking how this year’s programme reflects our complicated times in often surprisingly joyous and unexpected ways. Featuring artists from more than 20 countries, the Festival also has strong local roots, with several commissions featuring the people of Manchester as participants. MIF19 will be a feast of energy, which I hope will inspire debate and delight for the festival’s 18 days and far beyond.”

Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council, says: "Since its early beginnings in 2005 MIF has attracted thousands of visitors from around the world that bring with them a huge economic boost to the city. The Festival is unrivalled in terms of the calibre of internationally renowned artists, musicians and performers that take part, whilst also inspiring local people themselves to get involved.

"These are exciting times for culture in Manchester. As we look ahead to the opening of the city's landmark new cultural venue The Factory in a couple of years' times, MIF19 is once again set to place Manchester centre-stage and showcase it as the vibrant centre of innovation, culture, and creativity that it undoubtedly is."