'Bringers of Dreams': Brighton Early Music Festival 2026 Preview

Hannah Ely (soprano)
Olwen Foulkes (recorders)
Oliver Webber (violin)
Kristiina Watt (lute, theorbo, baroque guitar)
Harry Buckoke (viola da gamba)
The Royal Sackbut Collective:
Buchen Zhao (alto & tenor sackbut)
Jonathan Stevens (alto & tenor sackbut)
Jess Anderson (tenor sackbut)
Andrew Cowie (tenor sackbut)
José Teixeira (tenor sackbut)
Jonny Lovatt (bass sackbut)
 
7.30pm, Saturday 9 May 2026
Champs Hill, Pulborough
 

Oliver Webber, Olwen Foulkes,
Harry Buckoke & Kristiina Watt
© Cathy Boyes

Brighton Early Music Festival, now in its 24^th year, will run from 2-25 October 2026, with its usual selection of pre-festival workshops and community and family events from 19 September onwards. This year’s theme is ‘Bringers of Dreams’, and last Saturday, BREMF held a Festival Preview event at the picturesque setting of Champs Hill. 
 
The idea was to present a flavour of some of the music that will be performed, but presented here by a small group of performers, including co-Artistic Directors Hannah Ely and Olwen Foulkes. They were joined by festival regulars Oliver Webber (violin), Kristiina Watt (lute, theorbo & baroque guitar) and Harry Buckoke (viola da gamba). And representing the BREMF Emerging Artists scheme (formerly known as BREMF Live!) was The Royal Sackbut Collective, who will be performing in the opening concert of this year’s festival. 
 
Hannah and Olwen gave an overview of some of the key themes of the festival, and talked with passion about the great work that BREMF does, particularly with the Emerging Artists, in schools across Brighton and Hove, and also touched on One Song, a project working with settled refugees in Brighton, who will be sharing songs from their homes via a video installation in an exhibition during the festival.
 

Olwen Foulkes & Hannah Ely
BREMF Co-Artistic Directors
© Cathy Boyes

They then introduced the evening’s programme, which was made up of principally three sections. They began with a selection of excerpts from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, which will be performed at the end of the festival by the London Handel Players and solo singers from the Emerging Artists programme (currently being recruited). Webber & Foulkes gave us a bright opening Hornpipe, then Ely delivered ‘See my many colour’d fields’ with a beautifully mellow, pure tone, with gentle ornamentation from Webber on the violin. Several dance movements were given variety with Foulkes switching recorders and sensitive accompaniment provided by Watt and Buckoke. But the highlight of this brief selection had to be The Plaint, ‘O let me weep’, from the final Masque. Here, Ely’s pure tone was enriched with moments of passion (‘He’s gone’) and lamenting sighs. They certainly whetted the appetite for a full rendition of this wonderful semi-opera in October. 
 
Next came a sequence of Dowland songs, as we are in year of the 400^th anniversary of his death, and thus Dowland will feature highly in this year’s festival, with a day-long celebration of his music on Saturday 17 October. Here, four members of the Royal Sackbut Collective stepped forward to accompany Hannah Ely in ‘O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness’, and despite the Champs Hill hall’s relatively dry acoustic, they balanced the sackbuts with subtlety, blending with Ely’s sensitive singing remarkably well. Ely was then joined by Watt on the lute and for ‘Time stands still’, sung with pose, delicate ornamentation and precise diction, with graceful support from the lute. Foulkes on recorder and Buckoke on the viola da gamba joined for ‘Now, O now I needs must part’, with Foulkes’ playful and virtuosic treble recorder lightly dancing along, and they concluded the sent with ‘Sorrow, stay, lend true repentant tears’, with more plaintive lamenting from Ely, following Dowland’s word-painting lines down (‘down I fall’) and up again (‘arise’), finishing with beautiful control on the long final note. Again, a short taste, but a reminder of the surprising variety of colours and moods in Dowland’s songs.
 

BREMF 2026 Festival Preview - full ensemble
© Nick Boston

After the interval, the remainder of the concert shifted focus to Florence as a true ‘City of Dreams’. The opening concert will trace 200 years of Florentine art and invention, and will feature the Monteverdi String Band (led by Oliver Webber), the BREMF Consort of Voices, and The Royal Sackbut Collective. Tonight’s music took us from ‘En vray amoure’, attributed to Henry VIII in the early 16^th century through to music by Gabrieli, Caccini and Uccellini, taking us up to the mid 17^th century. The Royal Sackbut Collective contrasted lively rhythms and virtuosic, rapid motion in the Henry VIII piece with sombre, dark tones and dynamic interest in Verdelot’s ‘Se l’ardor foss’ equale’. Oliver Webber then introduced the ‘lira da braccio’, an instrument designed specifically for accompanying the voice, often seen in renaissance art. Performing on the instrument for the first time, the blend of drone, ornamentation and harmony blended perfectly with Ely’s voice in Corteccia’s ‘O begli anni de l’oro’. In Marenzio’s ‘Belle ne fe' natura’, Ely, Foulkes and Webber weaved their three high lines in a perfect blend, then the four instrumentalists danced through Marini’s Sonata with fresh virtuosic energy. ‘Mater Hierusalem’, from an early 17^th century manuscript (‘Carlo G.’) followed, full of decorative divisions and ornamentation from Webber and Ely, the complexity increasing and matched, one after the other. The Royal Sackbut Collective returned for the glorious ‘O Jesu Christe’ by Giovanni Gabrieli, the players warming their blend nicely from a quiet opening to a full sound, with gently rocking rhythms in the triplet sections. Caccini’s ‘Chi nel fior di giovinezza’ followed from Ely and the instrumentalists, the voice now playful, even skittish, with virtuosic melismas, and they then brought the evening to a close with an instrumental Aria Sopra la Bergamasca by Uccellini, launched by a ground bass from Buckoke on viola da gamba, and building to joyful virtuosity from Foulkes and Webber, their rapid flourishes running from one to the other. 
 
This whole final section was a wonderful reminder of the joys of the Florentine repertoire, and brought back memories of BREMF’s Florentine Intermedi (2012) and Four Weddings and Funeral (2010) with Musica Secreta. So lots of great music to look forward to in this year’s festival, presented in imaginative and innovative ways and continuing the BREMF tradition of exploring connections and challenging preconceptions of early music. The full programme will be launching soon, but for now, sign up on their mailing list here for more information.

(Pre-order The Royal Sackbut Collective's debut album here).

'The Beating Heart of Brighton' - the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra's 2026/27 Season

After another successful and imaginative season only just coming to a close last month, the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra have launched details of their next season, and it promises some exciting and interesting events. At their launch event on 23 April, we were entertained by a short performance by two beneficiaries of the BPO’s Spring Forwards scheme, which supports and mentors young music graduates to perform in the orchestra. Cellist Emily Henderson and violist Athalie Armon-Jones gave a graceful and poised performance of Beethoven’s Eyeglasses Duo, Variations on ‘Se vuol ballare’, followed by arrangements of three of Bartók’s Duos for two violins, played with lively rhythmic energy, both players proving worthy advocates for BPO’s investment in young talent.

 

The main season proper starts in September, but it’s great to see them returning to the Brighton Festival this month, with a performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, conducted by their Music Director, Joanna MacGregor. For this performance, they’ve joined forces with artist and filmmaker William Kentridge, who has made an animated film, ‘Oh to Believe in Another World’, using puppets, collage and masked actors. Kentridge, who also directs Glyndebourne’s new production of L’Orfeo from June, will introduce the film onstage, making connections between Shostakovich’s complex relationship with the Soviet Union state, and the politics of oppression in Kentridge’s native South Africa and around the world.

 

Joanna MacGregor continues with her creative and interesting programming choices in the autumn. As ever, there are familiar crowd pleasers – Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in September, Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade in October, and Pachelbel’s Canon in November – but they all sit within programmes full of variety and less standard fare. 

 

Khrystyna Mykhailichenko

20-year-old Ukrainian pianist Khrystyna Mykhailichenko will perform the Rachmaninov in September, preceded by Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, with Janáček’s glorious Sinfonietta following, with Piazzolla’s Primavera Porteña, played by violinist Emily Trubshaw, thrown in for good measure. 

 

In previous seasons, the strings and percussion sections of the BPO have had their chance to shine alone. October’s concert now showcases the wind section (plus some of the brass), with Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments and his Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, with Milda Daunoraite the piano soloist in the latter. This is followed by Mozart’s exquisite ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade for 13 wind instruments. The wind section has been particularly on form in recent concerts, so this is definitely one to look out for. 

 

Eric Vloeimans

Jazz has also featured regularly in MacGregor’s programming, and November’s concert brings Dutch trumpeter, composer, record producer and songwriter Eric Vloeimans, with an eclectic programme, including the premiere of his new work, Innermission. The programme includes his jazz take on Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas – or Dido and Aeneazz, as he has called it – and there’s Rameau, Couperin and that famous Pachelbel in the mix, all no doubt with fresh jazz-infused interpretations from Vloeimans, with MacGregor conducting and on piano. They are also taking the programme to Kings Place in London – good to see some orchestral traffic in the opposite direction to the norm.

 

December brings a suitably icy programme to the Brighton Dome, with Vaughan Williams Sinfonia Antarctica, in which he drew on his score for the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic to create his seventh symphony. The upper voices of the Brighton Festival Chorus join to provide the ethereal wordless chorus, and exceptional soprano Elizabeth Watts is the soloist. The concert also includes La Sindone by Arvo Pärt, and Jonny Greenwood’s Water, a work for strings, flutes and Indian tanpura, inspired by Philip Larkin’s poem of the same name. The tanpura will be played by Bishi, a fabulously talented and versatile performer. I recently saw her in the Brighton Festival in The Age of Consent, a moving and timely recreation of the seminal album from Bronski Beat, on that occasion singing and playing the sittar. The Greenwood will also be performed alongside live visuals from Kathy Hinde. Sibelius’ atmospheric, sweeping The Swan of Tuonela completes the programme.

 

Alistair McGowan

The BPO Brass Quintet are joined again by narrator Alistair McGowan for their now traditional and highly popular rendition of A Christmas Carol, this year taking it to four churches across Sussex, including Lewes, Petworth and Alfriston, as well as St George’s in Kemptown, Brighton. 

 

And so to 2027, and they kick off in January with Joanna playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, coupled with John Adams’ mighty choral work, Harmonium, for which they are joined by Brighton Festival Chorus, with the baton in the assured hand of Alice Farnham. They open with Avril Coleridge-Taylor’s Sussex Landscape, a darkly expressive piece composed in 1939, around the time she moved to Buxted in Sussex. Daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, she had a successful career as a pianist, conductor and composer, and her music is receiving something of a revival in interest of late.

Jacqui Dankworth

Joanna MacGregor said in her overview of the season that she doesn’t really buy into the whole Valentine’s Day thing, so has subverted the theme for their concert on 14 February. ‘Bad Girls and Heartbreakers’ features music from Bizet’s Carmen, as well as Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, as well as three songs of love and loss by Kurt Weill, sung by Jacqui Dankworth (who also narrates the Shostakovich). The BPO welcome back Geoffrey Paterson to conduct, and squeezed in the middle of the programme is Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, perhaps a more conventional choice – but then we know how that story ends too…

 

Joanna MacGregor

They move from winter into spring in March with Harrison Birtwistle’s epic The Triumph of Time, inspired by Bruegel’s procession of Time leading Death whilst life carries on seemingly unaware in the background. The BPO will then lead us, via Debussy’s orchestrations of Satie’s Gympnopédies, to Stravinsky’s blazing Firebird Suite. 

 

And for the April climax of their season, somewhat of a coup for MacGregor and the orchestra. Nigel Kennedy (remarkably celebrating his 70^th birthday in December) will perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, along with his arrangements of Jimi Hendrix's music. It can’t be often that Beethoven and Hendrix share the concert platform, and what better way to exemplify MacGregor’s continually inventive programming.

 

Check out Joanna MacGregor’s regular short lectures, The Listening Club, in which she delves into the music, usually a week or so before the concert. And Joanna and the orchestra’s principals will be presenting chamber music concerts at Brighton College, with masterclasses for students earlier in the day. Alongside their Spring Forwards scheme, they are also launching Brighton Spring, to take performances, workshops and collaborations to schools across Sussex.

 

Details of all concert dates and tickets (on sale now) here.