BREMF – Connections –  2024 Festival – Preview

The Brighton Early Music Festival is going through an era of change. Soon BREMF’s inspiration and co-founder Deborah Roberts BEM will hand over the baton to a new Artistic Director (she has already passed the BREMF Consort of Voices into the care of James Elias), so this is her final bouquet of Early Music events, and what a splendid programme she has compiled!
https://www.bremf.org.uk/whats-on/

Indeed, any event in this festival will be of interest to connoisseurs and general music lovers alike but I have chosen four groups of events as a sample of what you can expect.

The festival theme is Connections and this season is all about links, associations and influences – something BREMF is brilliant at.

It starts with a selection of workshops for those who want to get more involved and join in performances at a later date. Getting your audience to take part is a very smart connection.

The Medieval Greatest Hits workshop connects with the Musical Meeting Places concert to perform the fascinatingly complex music of Binchois, Bedyngham and Landini.

The Singing 15th-century Music workshop will prepare members of the BREMF Consort of Voices to read from original notation (which looks very odd to modern eyes) in the Connections of Power concert with the ensemble Cappella Pratensis when they recreate the lavish music performed at the dynastic wedding of Margaret of York to Charles the Bold of Burgundy in 1468.

Cappella Pratensis photo Johan Beckers

Participants in the Vivaldi Gloria Workshop will get valuable insights into this popular work from Christopher Monks of the Armonici Consort, who conducts it in full in The Forgotten Scarlatti. This concert will involve young voices from Eastbourne Music Centre and local primary schools.

Palaye Seck’s six week dance course is an extended workshop to rehearse the West African Lion Dance that will feature in the multi-cultural event Origins on 13 Oct..

Origins

BREMF has a very strong educational mission and will be actively seeking out young talent in the Singer Songwriter Workshop, a free event for 16-25 year olds including A level & BTEC students from East Sussex Academy of Music, focussing on John Dowland (died 1626) and singer songwriters through the ages.

…and even the very youngest fans are catered for in OAE TOTS, when soloists from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment play a musical adventure for 2-5 year olds (with their parents and carers).

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment – TOTS

BREMF’s greatest contribution to Early Music is the phenomenon of BREMF LIVE! which has brought on the careers of so many brilliant scholars over the years. The roll call is prodigious. They return in subsequent years as old friends and seasoned professionals. This year’s gang will reveal their talents at BREMF Live Showcase in St George’s, afternoon Sat. 19 Oct. and again in the evening at BREMF Live Clubnight, in The Rose Hill pub. Other events that will blend alcohol with singing include The Telling Unchained at The Brunswick, featuring former co-Artistic Director Clare Norburn’s farewell performance at BREMF, and Smock Alley.

BREMF LIVE! 2024

Then there are the concerts by dear friends of BREMF, like the virtuosic and exuberant Red Priest, who have come up with Truly Madly Baroque, linking music with the madness of love (they should know!); former BREMF LIVE! artists Flutes & Frets who will give the Malcolm Rose Memorial Concert in Don’t Stop the Music; and Voice Trio performing Hildegard Transfigured 2. They were a great hit with version 1 in 2019 and again in 2020.

French Connections features young singers from BREMF Live! alongside the BREMF Players and the Baroque Collective Singers under John Hancorn.

Deborah Roberts BEM

For more than 20 years BREMF has provided a platform for established artists with the highest performance standards; BREMF has also encouraged and mentored generations of new talent; All the while, BREMF has carefully enticed, educated and enlarged a very enthusiastic audience, and kept going through hard times, solvent and innovative – no small achievement thanks to Deborah Roberts and the very dedicated BREMF team. This promises to be another really excellent festival.

Andrew Connal
August 2024