BREMF's Autumn Festival is back, for the first time since 2019.

Secret Byrd - the Gesualdo Six (Photo Mark Allen)

For the first time since 2019, the Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) is presenting an Autumn festival, across two weekends from 13 October to 28 October 2023.

The festival opens with Secret Byrd, the Gesualdo Six and Fretwork in an immersive music drama based around Byrd's masses performed by candlelight. And continuing the theatrical theme, Whispering Dome will be a large scale multi-media event involving BREMF choirs, local schools and musicians from Morocco and West Africa, devised by Jeremy Avis

The Fieri Consort is presenting a programme based around the music of two Renaissance women, Maddalena Casulana, the first female composer to have had a whole book of her music printed and published in the history of western music, and Barbara Strozzi, who published eight volumes of her own music, and had more secular music in print than any other composer of the era. And continuing the female theme, Musica Secreta & Celestial Sirens present Mother, Sister Daughter, music and stories of women.

Other visitors include mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston and lutenist Toby Carr in their Battle Cry: She Speaks programme, and La Fonte Musica from Italy in a programme entitled Musical Enigmas.

There will be a BREMF Live! Showcase featuring emerging early music ensembles as well as a BREMF  Live! Clubnight.

The festival ends with Buxtehude's Membra Jesu nostri performed by the BREMF Singers & Players and the Arculo Consort of Viols.

Full details from the BREMF website.