IT has been a busy week for the Gregynog Festival’s artistic director Dr Rhian Davies, as the festival remembers the Welsh composer, singer and pianist Morfydd Owen on the centenary of her death.

The actual 100th anniversary was last Friday, September 7, when Rhian was greatly honoured to be invited to unveil a blue plaque, on the house in which Morfydd died in 1918, in Mumbles, Swansea, with flowers also laid at the grave in Oystermouth Cemetery.

Rhian was also invited to speak about the composer’s local connections in Treforest with performances of her music prior to the installation of another blue plaque at Morfydd’s birthplace at 68 Park Street, Treforest, last Sunday afternoon.

Rhian is the leading authority on Morfydd, who was the subject of her doctorate in 1999 and she is also the author of pictorial biography 'Never So Pure a Sight / Yr Eneth Ddisglair Annwyl'.

Born in Treforest in 1891, Morfydd was an outstanding Welsh singer and pianist as well as a composer.

This year’s Gregynog Festival has a completely changed format breaking out of its usual Mid Wales base to include events in South Wales and London for their 'Remembering Morfydd' commemoration, with performances, talks, exhibitions and special events in locations central to the composer’s life in Wales and London.

The festival even goes to Belgium where Rhian is this weekend, having been invited to speak about her research into the Belgian refugee musicians who settled in Mid Wales during the First World War and their links to Gregynog.

It is part of this international conference at Leuven University, organised by the Belgian Musicological Society, and an exhibition, which goes on into November, at the Royal Library of Belgium, in Brussels.

Rhian returns to Mid Wales for the 'Morfydd in Montgomeryshire' events of the festival which will be taking place at Newtown, Llangadfan, and Llanbrynmair between September 23 and 29, featuring concerts by harpist Llywelyn Ifan Jones, plus Siân James and Steffan Rhys Hughes.

Llanbrynmair was Owen’s Montgomeryshire family seat from which she took her bardic name Llwyn-Owen.

Festival events continue through to December 8, and since opening in July, the festival has included events at the BBC Proms in London and at the National Eisteddfod in Cardiff.

Full programme details and regular updates are available via https://gwylgregynogfestival.org/ and the Morfydd Owen 100 social media channels on Facebook and Twitter. Box office enquiries should be directed to festival administrator Sarah Yeomans on 01686 207100.