BREMF is back: Autumn festival returns with over 20 events

After three years of disruption, experimentation, and adapting to circumstances, Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) returns this Autumn in full pre-pandemic style with more than 20 events during September and October 2023. The main festival runs from 13 to 28 October 2023 and highlights include The Gesualdo Six and Fretwork in their music drama Secret Byrd and The Whispering Dome, a large scale multi-media event featuring a varied range of traditional and early music from Europe, Morocco and West Africa tracing routes followed by migrating swallows.

Other events include Musica Secreta in Mother, Sister, Daughter, music and intriguing stories of women across the ages, including newly discovered music, and a new commission by Joanna Marsh, Fieri Consort in The Excellence of Women, newly discovered madrigals of Maddalena Casulana alongside works by another of Italy’s greatest composers, Barbara Strozzi, La Fonte Music in works by 14th century composer Antonio Zacara da Teramo. Visiting groups include Ensemble Hesperi, Helen Charlston, mezzo-soprano & Toby Carr, theorbo, and the festival ends with BREMF Players, Baroque Collective Singers and soloists in Bach and Buxtehude.

Before the main festival, a series of pre-events run from 16 September offering opportunities to take part in choral and instrumental workshops, OAE TOTS family concerts, and a ceilidh celebrating the music of John Playford’s The English Dancing Master. BREMF will be popping up around the city too, with free performances of music by William Byrd and a baroque-ground-bass-meets-jazz fusion event.

Full details from the BREMF website.