Hay Festival 2013: What's going on at Hay after dark As local legend has it, some extraordinary things happen in Hay-on-Wye after dark. My favourite story features the wise, beautiful and strong Maud de Braose (c1155-1210), wife of the 4th Lord of Bamber. Also known in Welsh myth as Moll Wallbee, and ultimately imprisoned and starved to death by King John, the strapping "giantess" single-handedly built the castle at Hay in one night, it's said, carrying huge stones in her apron. When one fell into her shoe, she angrily threw it a few miles over the Wye into the churchyard at Llowes. While we can't promise any impromptu castle construction, this year's festival will certainly feature some impressive nocturnal action from giants of the music and comedy circuit. Moll Wallbee's is exactly the kind of story that's been inspiring new material from the hugely talented, BRIT Award-winning singer-songwriter KT Tunstall, who'll be unveiling songs from her eagerly anticipated fifth album, "Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon," scheduled for release in June. A return to her country-folk roots, the album features a song called Hallowed Ground which, she says, is partly about the bodies hung from the windows of the castle in her hometown of St Andrews. Live, she's been known to accessorize her vigorous guitar style with kazoo, tongue clicks and impersonations of African women going through hallucenogenic rituals. If it's real African music you're after then Hay is celebrating its twinning with Timbuktu in Mali this year with some great desert blues from Malian superstars Amadou & Mariam, up and coming Tuareg band Terakaft and singer-songwriter Rokia Traore, who wrote the intense, austere music for Toni Morrison's 2011 play Desdemona. Composer Philip Glass says that his hypnotic, genre-bending music forms part of "a language which was based on global music, on music that grew up in Africa and India. I was in that generation of people who could look beyond the borders of Europe and North America and South America. In conversation with the ENO production team, the 76-year-old Glass will be celebrating the premiere of his new opera about the last years of Walt Disney's life, The Perfect American. He will also be giving a solo piano recital. As he works through those minimalist modulations, you may be able to hear how addictive repetitions were influenced by a train journey he took as a boy: "It was an overnight train and in those days we had no Walkmans or games or iPods or whatever. So you stayed up all night. They turned the lights off and you listened to the train, the clickety-clack of the tracks. Think about it, that kind of sound. I could listen to it for hours, and I did. There's more explicit railroad imagery in "This Train": the moody debut singer from sultry Texan chanteuse Chrysta Bell, who's been making smouldering music with director David Lynch. It was the theme tune to his surreal series, Twin Peaks, that first opened her up to the possibilities of music. He recently told Rolling Stone that he loves watching his latest muse sing: "especially at midnight. That's when it all makes sense. She's truly strange and otherworldly and occupies this parallel universe. It's a dream world that's real. There are more earthy charms to be found in performances from folk star Seth Lakeman, former Strangler Hugh Cornwell and Irish legend Christy Moore, who recently told The Telegraph that the older he gets, the more time he spends agonising over his lyrics: "I have to be at ease with every phrase and I search for the perfect word. Even though it wrecks me sometimes, it's a labour of love. Also honing his craft is quirky-minded comedian Alan Davies - best known for his role as Stephen Fry's affable foil on QI. After more than a decade on TV, Davies has returned to his first love: stand up. He's said he's been maturing, like a fine wine. "Or am I like a mature cheese," he recently quipped, "stinky?" He'll be joined in bringing laughter to Hay by fellow panel show favourites Marcus Brigstocke, Dara O'Briain, Jo Caulfield, Ed Byrne and Jo Brand, who says she was drawn back to stand-up because "the world has become a horrible place for women again and I want to be gobby about it." Like Maud de Braose, Brand admits she could be accused of "throwing stones. But that," she once said, "is the joy of not being a politician, you can say what you like without having to double check it with 12 people first. And I can honestly say I've never sold any arms to a repressive foreign regime while reassuring everyone at home that the weapons will be used for nice things.