Hampstead Arts Festival

St John's Church, Downshire Hill

This year's Hampstead Arts Festival runs from 1 to 22 November, finishing rather appropriately on St. Cecilia's Day. Many of this year's concerts involve Baroque music, with cellist Natalie Clein playing all of Bach's cello suites (1,4/11), Angela Hewitt lecturing on, and performing Bach's complete Art of Fugue (10/11) and harpsichord superstar Mahan Esfahani giving a lecture-recital to launch his complete works of Rameau recording on Hyperion (13/11).

But it isn't all 17th  and 18th century, there a two jazz concerts, involving Gwilym Simcock, veteran guitar virtuoso John Etheridge (22/11) and an acoustic quartet led by trumpeter Freddie Gavita (15/11). And, the Wihan String Quartet (from Prague) perform Suk, Mozart and Dvorak (6/11), then tenor Ben Johnson and pianist Sebastian Wybrew will be giving a song recital (20/11). There also a sequence of spoken word events with speakers including Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Michael Berkeley and Glenda Jackson.

Concerts all take place at St John's Church, Downshire Hill, NW3 1NU, with the spoken word events at Burgh House.