Brighton Early Music Festival at Christmas

 

Tickets here.

O Magnum Mysterium - The Baroque Collective Singers with the Lewes Festival of Song

The Baroque Collective Singers

The Baroque Collective Singers are performing in a Christmas fundraiser concert to support the Lewes Festival of Song at St. Anne’s Church, Lewes on Friday December 14th at 8pm.

John Hancorn

Following their successful festival finale last July, The Baroque Collective Singers are once again conducted by their Director, John Hancorn.  They will be performing 'O Magnum Mysterium', a candlelit, radiant seasonal programme of familiar and unfamiliar music, with some beautiful carols for the audience to join in. The programme includes highly contrasting settings of O Magnum Mysterium by Victoria, Poulenc and Ola Gjeilo.  There will be music by contemporary composers such as James MacMillan, Judith Weir and Ed Hughes, as well as works by Holst, Britten and Tavener.  

Guest cellist Sebastian Comberti and pianist and festival director Nancy Cooley will be playing too.  Tickets are £15 (under 16s £7.50) with proceeds going towards a new piano for the festival. Mulled wine and refreshments by donation. Get tickets here.

Sebastian Comberti

Nancy Cooley

  

Brighton Early Music Festival, 26 October - 11 November 2018

This year’s festival celebrates the richness of 700 years of music from Europe, and looks at Britain’s long and often tempestuous relationship with the rest of the Continent from medieval times onwards. Concerts draw on the important alliances, wars, trade, migrations, revolutions and dissolutions, as a result drawing parallels to some of the current challenges we face (a slight understatement!) in terms of our relationship with the rest of Europe.  Despite the increasing challenges of funding such a festival, Artistic Director Deborah Roberts once again promises us a typically varied and innovative range of concerts, workshops and events.  

Sollazzo Ensemble

The festival the kicks off with the Sollazzo Ensemble exploring La Contenance Angloise, an early English cultural export and musical fashion which took Europe by storm in the 15^thcentury (Friday 26).  Then soprano Elin Manahan Thomas is joined by Elizabeth Kenny on lute & chitarrone for ‘Game of Thrones’, including music by Dowland, Tallis, Carissimi and others, reflecting the political machinations of the time (Saturday 27). The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble meanwhile focus on the influence of the Venetian wind-playing Bassano family, who brought their unrivalled skills to 16th century London (Saturday 27).

Spanish group Resonet are joined by the BREMF Community Choir to bring the music from the Lewes Breviary to life, and show how a European network of monastaries shared and influenced music across the continent (Sunday 28).  

Canto Fiorito & Musica Antiqua Salzburg

The Consone Quartet and Flauguissimo Ensemble take us to Scandinavia for a slice of classical and traditional music from the north (Friday 2 November), whilst Canto Fiorita from Lithuania and Musica Antiqua Salzburg bring us music from across the Hanseatic League, a proto-EU of 11 countries in Northern Europe from the 13^th-17^thcenturies (Sunday 4 November).

A highlight of every BREMF is the BREMF Live! Showcase, and this year promises to be no different, with performances from five emerging ensembles supported by the festival (Saturday 3 November), including medieval vocal ensemble Voice, early baroque group Dramma per Musica, and classical ensemble Pocket Sinfonia.

Fieri Consort

Lux Musicae London will be performing music by John Dowland and others from the court of Christian IV in Denmark (Sunday 4 November), and the Fieri Consort are in the year 1588, considering what might have happened if the wind had not changed, and the Spanish Armada had succeeded in invading Britain – at the same time as the first Italian madrigal anthology with English texts crossed the Alps, a cultural conquest that made madrigal singing the height of fashion across Europe (Friday 9 November).  

Once again, BREMF are also offering us the chance to see rarely performed early opera, and this year we get not one but two, with a double bill of Il Ballo delle Ingrate by Monteverdi, and Venus and Adonis by John Blow.  With a great cast of young soloists, and the Monteverdi String Band, Thomas Guthrie directs productions combining music and dance (6-8 November).

BREMF Consort of Voices

Two powerful concerts will conclude this year’s festival.  First, in Reformation Remainers, the BREMF Consort of Voices, directed by Deborah Roberts, perform music by Taverner, Tallis and Byrd, drawing parallels between the fierce divide brought about by the English Reformation (the break with Rome), and Brexit (the break with Brussels) (Saturday 10 November).  And finally, Peace in Europe, a concert for Armistice Day will include music by Handel, Zelenka and Purcell, performed by the BREMF Players and Singers, directed by John Hancorn (Sunday 11 November).

For venues, times and tickets, visit BREMF.

Summer, Song and Strawberries - The Baroque Collective Singers

Baroque Collective Singers
John Hancorn, director

Sunday 2 July, 6.30pm

St Michael's Church, 158 High Street, Lewes BN7 1XU

The Baroque Collective Singers perform a cappella music for a summer evening, including Tudor madrigals - Wilbye's plangent 'Draw On, Sweet Night', neglected genius Weelkes's 'Hark all ye lovely saints' and, for light relief and some 'fa la las', John Bennet's 'All Creatures Now' - and French and English part songs.

The programme also features stunning choral music by Eric Whitacre, Britten, Janequin and Hindemith - plus prosecco and strawberries!


Details on Facebook here.

Tickets here.

The Baroque Collective Singers

John Hancorn

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas - The Baroque Collective and Singers, Lewes Sunday 19 February

Purcell: 
Dido and Aeneas; Chacony in G minor; Hear My Prayer; Suite in G major

The Baroque Collective
Alison Bury, leader
The Baroque Collective Singers
John Hancorn, director
Catrin Woodruff, Dido
Jennifer Clark, Belinda
Andrew Robinson, Aeneas
Helen Dewhurst, Second Woman
Liz Webb, Sorceress
Liz Kelly, First Witch
Katie Hawks, Second Witch
Janet Ormerod, Spirit
Tony Jay, Sailor



The Baroque Collective and the Baroque Collective Singers present a concert performance of Purcell’s most famous work and probably the world’s favourite opera in English. Dido and Aeneas tells the story of the love between the Trojan hero Aeneas and the Carthaginian queen Dido, and of her subsequent suicide when he leaves to fulfil his destiny as founder of Rome. There is music of ravishing beauty, including Dido's famous lament 'When I am laid in earth', an evil Sorceress, a jolly sailor, and wonderful choruses for the Baroque Collective Singers. The first half of the concert features the Baroque Collective performing Purcell's Chacony in G minor and Suite in G major, and the Baroque Collective Singers performing Purcell's 'Hear My Prayer'.

Sunday 19 February 2017, 6.30pm
St Michael's Church, 158 High St, Lewes BN7 1XU

Tickets: £15 & £10 (Under 16s free) on the door or from Lewes Tourist Information Centre, 187 High St, Lewes, BN7 2DE.
Online tickets here.

Details on Facebook here.

Brighton Early Music Festival 2016 - Preview

BREMF enters its fifteenth year and this year’s programme is as eclectic and diverse as ever.  As well as over fifteen events in the main festival (28 October – 13 November), there are also nine pre-festival events, including workshops, masterclasses, talks, tasters, and even a concert specifically targeted at 2-5 year olds. So as well as hearing great performances from top class early music musicians, you can take part too.

This year’s theme is Nature and Science, and events look the interconnections between these, and how they run closely with the history of music.  So the festival looks at the lives of some well-known and lesser-known scientists, musicians, philosophers and thinkers, as well as exploring the influence of science and nature on music and composers in new and imaginative ways.

The Marian Consort

Co-director Clare Norburn has written another music drama, following on the success of previous projects about the lives of Gesualdo, Hildegard of Bingen and others, this time turning her attention to Galileo.  As well as being a famous astronomer, physicist & philosopher, he had a passion for music, and music played a huge part in his family life, as well as in his understanding of practical experiments.  Music is performed by The Marian Consort and the Monteverdi String Band.

English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble
(credit: Hugh Beauchamp)

And Co-director Deborah Roberts presents an ambitious new production, Gaia, combining music and drama from the 16^th and 17^th centuries with 21^st century effects including film, projections, lighting, mime, yoga and dance to tell the story of our Earth.  The music includes Brumel’s amazing ‘Earthquake’ Mass, and performers include the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, the BREMF Consort of Voices, the Lacock Scholars and the BREMF Community Choir – an event not to be missed!  Money is still being raised to support this ambitious venture – and until 13^th September you can support it too.  See more here and at www.crowdfunder.co.uk/gaia-appeal.

The Telling
(© Robert Piwko)

Other events include L’Avventura London exploring the little-known 17^th century musician, alchemist & polymath Athanasius Kirchner, the viol consort Fretwork performing Bach’s The Art of Fugue, and The Telling perform The Lily and the Rose, a programme of music from the 12^th to 15^th centuries inspired by these flowers, and their association with the Virgin Mary.  For ‘Fairest Isle and Foulest Weather’, a programme of music from The Tempest by Matthew Locke and King Arthur by Henry Purcell, the BREMF Players and BREMF Singers are directed by John Hancorn.  

Palisander

Spiritato! present ‘Guts and Glory!’, with heroic music for strings, five natural trumpets and drums, baroque brass at its dazzling best.  And in a brand new family show, the recorder consort Palisander, a hit at last year’s festival, combine with puppets from Rust and Stardust to present Dr Dee’s Daughter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Details of all these concerts and more, as well as all the pre-festival events in September and October, can be found at www.bremf.org.uk or telephone 01273 709709.  Tickets on sale from 5 September.