SWALEDALE Festival has a special focus this year, A Celebration of the Human Voice, with a wide-ranging programme of music that will bring leading national and international performers to the Dales.

Artistic director Malcolm Creese says it is his most ambitious line-up to date. Ensembles will include the King's Singers, Tenebrae Consort, a Russian vocal quartet, Lyra, tenor James Gilchrist singing with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, and Canadian mezzo soprano, Patricia Hammond with her Ragtime Parlour Band. 

Playing to other tastes will be jazz singer Liane Carroll, bluegrass band the Railsplitters and the Urban Folk Quartet. There will be concerts by popular loca ensembles, including the Swale Singers and Darlington-based Northern Voices, plus an all-day singing workshop at Richmond School with composer and former King's Singer, Bob Chilcott.

"I don't always have a theme, but sometimes one emerges of its own accord, and I think I have neglected the human voice in the past two or three years," said Mr Cleese, now in his eighth year as director.

"There are lots of choirs in the area and we get good audiences for spoken word events. We have built up a good audience for poetry and the Reeth lecture, which started off as a silly kind of pun, is always a sell-out."

The theme also ties in with this year's schools project – on northern dales dialect.

Last year, Prime Minister David Cameron awarded Swaledale Festival a Big Society Award for its education and outreach work, which is less well known about as it does not usually appear in the brochure.

Projects generally run for 18 months, so audiences must wait until 2016 to hear dialect as part of the festival programme, but Mr Cleese is enthusiastic about the possibilities.

"There is plenty of recorded dialects in museums and on archive shelves, but we are seeking to bring it to the public. Children often hear it spoken by older relations, but it is probably weakening among the younger generations. I hope there will be some kind of performance."

Swaledale Festival, which last year attracted audiences totalling about 8,000 to ticketed events, is unique in offering concerts in small venues often in very out-of-the-way places. The beautiful landscape is part of the attraction.

This gives the festival its distinct character and will not change, but for the first time a much larger venue has become available – the Garden Rooms extension at Tennants, in Leyburn, which can seat 700-800.

This is more than twice the number possible at Grinton church, until now the largest building with space for about 300.

Garden Rooms audiences will see the Black Dyke Band giving the premiere of a work specially composed for the festival, and the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain – which has sold out the Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall and Sydney Opera House – currently celebrating its 30th anniversary.

St Andrew's Church, at Grinton, will welcome Lyra, a vocal quartet from St Petersburg, singing sacred music of the Russian Orthodox Church, comic Russian folk songs and operatic arias. The King's Singers also perform at Grinton.

St Mary's Church, in Richmond, is the venue for Werca's Folk, an award winning choir of unaccompanied women's voices from Morpeth, performing with Northern Voices, the new name of the former Carol Andrew mixed voice choir from Darlington.

"My aim is to make a festival which can only happen here," said Mr Cleese," something unique to the Dales. People come from all over the country so I don't want them opening the brochure and seeing ensembles and performers listed which they could see anywhere."

The fortnight runs from May 23 to June 6 with 53 ticketed events and other free activities including walks and exhibitions. Online booking opens on March 23. Tickets and the brochure are available on swalefest.org.