Booking now open for Summer Festival 2012!

So it’s still cold and miserable outside, and too dark in the evenings, but summer is hotting up Spitalfields Music HQ as booking is now open for our Summer Festival 2012!

Matthew Barley at Village Underground (Image: Alys Tomlinson)

Running from 8-23 June, the Festival is packed with more musical treats than ever! Leading the programme as our Associate Artists are the Gabrieli Consort & Players, cellist Matthew Barley and tabla player and music producer Talvin Singh. Between them they present an eclectic series of performances ranging from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, and Stravinsky’s mass setting to a fusion of tabla, folk and electronic, a candle-lit performance of John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil and a search for the answer to the question, What’s Music For?

Paul McCreesh in Old Spitalfields Market (Image: Alys Tomlinson)

We welcome a number of music-theatre encounters, as The Sixteen return with a new commission from Alec Roth with Samuel Beckett’s Old Earth monologues. La Nuova Musica collaborate with Vignette Productions on Sacrifices: a new staging and installation around two baroque oratorios, and The Opera Group come together with the London Sinfonietta in Harrison Birtwistle’s tale of love and jealously, Bow Down.

Talvin Singh at Oxford House (Image: James Berry)

Alongside all this, Dutch cult sensation Night of the Unexpected makes its London debut, with a cocktail of experimental beats improvised jazz, composed repertoire and conceptual pop music. Late-night concerts from Melvyn Tan with Bach suites and new variations plus EXAUDI celebrating the beauty of John Cage’s vocal music. There’s also choral music of every flavour as the Monteverdi Choir go on a European choral pilgrimage, the Choir of Royal Holloway bring songs from the Baltic States and the distinct sounds of South American baroque from Florilegium and the Arakaendar Bolivia Choir.

All this and much, much more will be filling the extraordinary spaces of Spitalfields this summer! See our website for the full festival listings, or flick through the Festival brochure online.

Booking is now open: online 24 hours-a-day at spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk (just register an account if you’re new to us) or via the Box Office phone lines on 020 7377 1362 (open Mon-Fri, 10am-6pm).

Winter Festival photographs are here!

We had a fantastic time during the Winter Festival, and we hope those who attended did also. Here are a few photos of our favourite festival moments and events:

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Photograph credits: Celine Smith and  Sabine Tilly

A Volunteer’s View

Annabelle in action © Celine Smith

As a newcomer to Spitalfields Music, I was a little nervous but all of the staff and volunteers were very welcoming. Being a festival steward involved a variety of tasks each night. I welcomed people outside the church, sold programmes and showed people to their seats. There were some pretty big turn-outs at the concerts, so we were all kept busy beforehand!

The acclaimed Italian ensemble La Venexiana began the second half of the festival with Monteverdi madrigals. The sheer beauty of this Italian genius’ music and the blend of voices seemed to go down very well with the audience. Thursday was probably the highlight of the January concerts for me, the acclaimed tenor Paul Agnew gave a highly informative lecture-recital about the development of recitative. I didn’t know much about this topic, so it was interesting to hear from a specialist baroque singer. The programme was really varied and dramatic and made me realise how important recitative is in opera. Friday gave us two concerts, the first the exciting vocal group EXAUDI, who also sang Monteverdi madrigals. Again, another hit with the audience. The a capella sound certainly suited the acoustics of Christ Church Spitalfields. Then, the Retrospect Ensemble ended the Festival on a real high as they presented a selection of virtuosic instrumental works from Monteverdi’s contemporaries. I was totally amazed by the inventive writing of these composers and the skill of the performers.

So, all in all, three wonderful nights. Being a steward is very enjoyable and I would definitely recommend volunteering, if you’d like to do something good for the paying public and see concerts given by some of the best artists in the business. Roll on the Summer Festival!

Annabelle Lee
Spitalfields Music Festival Steward

The Winter Festival draws to a close…

Tonight we have the last two concerts of our Winter Festival. A fantastic double bill beginning with the wonderful EXAUDI in what will be a stunning rendition of Monteverdi’s Third Book of Madrigals at 6.30 pm followed by Retrospect Ensemble with a programme of Italian instrumental music exploring the styles and aesthetics of the Baroque era (8.30pm). There will be tickets available on the door for both of tonight’s performances (Cash & Cheque only).

We hope to see you there but if you’re unable to make it, don’t fret – we’ll be announcing our fantastic line-up for Summer Festival 2011 in February and we promise it won’t disappoint!

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Winter Festival Highlights

As we head in to the New Year, Acting Executive Director, Sarah Macnee shares with us the highlights of the remaining Winter Festival concerts.

In the New Year we have two more wonderful Monteverdi concerts as well as Paul Agnew’s exploration of Monteverdi, Opera & Beyond on Thursday 6 January. This event explores the idea of recitative, examines its spread throughout Europe, and the way in which it developed. Paul is not only a great tenor, but also a great interpreter of the baroque and pre-classical repertoire and his approach through a lecture-concert format will be very illuminating and engaging.

And finally, I’m really excited about the last of this year’s Winter Festival events on Friday 7 January. It’s our only ensemble concert and Retrospect’s debut at Spitalfields. The focus of the programme is on Monteverdi’s contemporaries. Don’t miss it.

If you would like to book for any of these events you can do so online or via the Box Office on 020 7377 1362 (Re-opens Jan 4 2011)