Shingai (star of the Noisettes) to headline at Primadonna next weekend…
Shingai Shoniwa, founder and frontwoman of indie rock back Noisettes, is headlining at new festival Primadonna in Suffolk, where she will play a live solo set on Saturday 31 August.
Shingai has performed with artists including Annie Lennox, Guillemots and Dizzie Rascal. She heads up Primadonna’s music line-up, which also features an array of new musical talent including Sink Ya Teeth, nominated for BBC 6Music’s record of the year last year, Rews, Shunaji and local artists Salvador and Caswell, who will both be supporting Ed Sheeran on the final nights of his record-breaking Divide world tour.
“As someone who wholeheartedly (re)claims the ‘primadonna’ mantle I’m thrilled to be headlining the first ever Primadonna festival,” she says. “It’s all about accessibility, diversity and inclusion, and we’re going to be having one heck of a party.”
Primadonna is a new festival celebrating brilliant writing, music and ideas, and open to people of all ages, genders and backgrounds. It takes place at the end of August (29 August – 1 September) in Laffitts Hall, Suffolk.
Headline appearances from authors such as Kit de Waal, Sandi Toksvig, Elif Shafak, Michael Donkor and Luke Jennings (of Killing Eve fame) will be complemented by workshops, panels, craft sessions, wellness and film screenings. Katy Brand, whose memoir I Carried A Watermelon documents her adolescent obsession with Dirty Dancing, will introduce a special late-night campfire screening of the film on Friday night.
And Shingai will also make a second appearance at the festival via a screening of the film Cook Off in which she stars, which will be followed by a Q&A with its writer/director Tomas Brickhill. It’s a romantic comedy against all odds, filmed in Zimbabwe during the fall of Mugabe – and this will mark only its second-ever UK screening.
