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IN THIS UPDATE:
IMPACT - FEEDBACK AND FIGURES
September was a busy month, with nine Continuo grantee ensembles presenting a total of nineteen concerts in venues accross the UK. These took place in London, Amersham, St Leonards-on-Sea, Castle Bolton, Banbury, Liverpool, Belfast and beyond.
With the eighth round of grant awards recently announced, we have been delighted as ever to hear from the new ensembles about how the grants are positively impacting their work:
"Baroque & Beyond's future is looking good thanks to the generosity of Continuo Foundation! The rewards for Baroque in the North go beyond the money - when a foundation recognises the value of your project, it gives the whole team a boost in confidence." - Amanda Babington
"We are absolutely delighted that our 'From Gainsborough's Salon' project will be supported by Continuo Foundation, allowing us to bring a 3-concert tour to London, Hampshire and Devon. As we celebrate our first birthday, this will also help us mark a huge milestone as we embark on our first professional recording as part of this project!"
- London Obbligato Collective
Continuo Foundation's impact since inception:
£850,000 awarded to 102 ensembles
1,100 freelance musician beneficiaries
203,000 audience beneficiaries
21 CD recordings released so far
2024 GRANTS - AWARDS ANNOUNCED
On 26 September, we announced our eighth round of grant awards, supporting twenty-seven new projects. Eight of the new grantee ensembles are first-time Continuo Foundation grant recipients. We also continued to expand our support to up-and-coming groups.
Ten of the new grantees were formed since 2020. As a result, we have now helped 29 recently formed groups to get their projects off the ground. In helping young musicians to further their careers, we are also supporting the pipeline of new talent for larger period instrument orchestras.
As we watch the new projects come to life from November through the end of April 2025, we are thrilled to see the positive momentum and ripple effects of the £850,000 in grants awarded to date.
This impact would not have been possible without the ongoing support of our donors, so we would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your generosity.
If you wish to continue supporting our work, please consider a multi-year pledge, if possible. If you would like to join our donor community, please get in touch with our CEO, Tina Vadaneaux.
CONTINUO CONNECT
Those who have visited Continuo Connect since 26 September may have noticed the addition of a video on the home page (see image below). This video aims to offer a taste of the artistry and intimacy of historical performances for new audiences who may be unsure of what an "early music" concert is like. It is also a reminder to existing audiences that there are lots of fabulous events listed all across the UK - over 240 of them at present - with more to come as our new grantees confirm their supported concerts. We are very grateful to the talented filmmaker, videographer and sound engineer Tom Mungall for creating this video for us from films of concerts supported by our grants over the years.
Support the artists on Continuo Connect by encouraging friends to visit the site!
PLAYER SPOTLIGHT
with Clare Norburn
Clare Norburn is a singer, playwright and producer, as well as Founder and Artistic Director of The Telling. As a playwright, Clare has developed a new genre of ‘concertplays’ and has collaborated on these with numerous ensembles such as the Dante Quartet for Beethoven’s Quartet Journey and the Monteverdi String Band for Galileo, among others. She is currently working on a play based on her experiences as a musician with hearing loss. As a singer, Clare has performed with many medieval ensembles, including her own group, The Telling. She is currently preparing for their medieval and traditional carol concert tour, and her latest concertplay. What the Dickens is a fusion of Charles Dickens’ life story and A Christmas Carol accompanied by 17th-19th century music Dickens would have known, and new work by Steven Edis.
How has Continuo impacted your day-to-day life? Continuo has made a major contribution to the ensemble I founded, The Telling, and of which I am Artistic Director. Since 2021, we have now had several grants for our touring projects. During that same period we have only had one Arts Council grant, although we were funded for all our projects by the Arts Council before the pandemic. As much of the work we do combines music and theatre, that requires more than average rehearsal and we simply couldn’t have toured to the same extent without Continuo’s support.
What new doors have opened for you since becoming a grantee?
So many. The programmes we have toured, thanks to Continuo, have resulted in several BBC Radio 3 and 4 broadcasts: for example, we were thrilled to be featured on Radio 4’s Front Row in 2021 and to have an hour-long feature on The Early Music Show in 2024. Also, one of the projects Continuo funded, our Into the Melting Pot tour, enabled us to develop a related outreach programme with refugees at the Wolverhampton Refugee and Migrant Centre. That project was awarded the 2024 REMA Audience award, meaning we were invited to Stockholm to talk about our work in front of early music professionals from across Europe.
What do you love about being a musician? That moment before you go out in front of an audience. I am mostly going to retire from singing after 2024 (due to age and significant hearing loss) but I have an image that I am taking through my final year of singing. And that is of Moira Shearer, the ballet dancer in one of my favourite films, Powell and Pressberger’s The Red Shoes. She is poised backstage, ready to go on: so nervous and yet fired up. I will miss that – and the moment when everything stops as I sing and communicate directly with the audience, responding to their attentiveness, which is singularly different each time.
Where did you encounter the most receptive audience? Oh – that’s difficult. I have to mention Brighton Early Music Festival, which I co-founded with the extraordinary Deborah Roberts, whom we so sadly lost recently, and co-ran with her until 2017. But also Liverpool, where we have developed and grown an audience: there’s something amazing about the people in Liverpool and they cheer like you are at a pop concert!
No.1 listening recommendation? I love The Musicians of Swanne Alley: a mix of Elizabethan theatre and street music. I loved this recording as a student and it was part of the wider inspiration for starting to explore the more popular music in the tavern scenes in my show I, Spie, which, as it is about John Dowland’s experience of getting caught up in the Elizabethan espionage network, mostly features the music of Dowland himself.
Read more about Clare Norburn and The Telling in this Continuo Connect Interview.
SEPTEMBER PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
Sestina Music - Lux et Umbra
Sestina Music launched their new season in September with their concert Lux et Umbra in Belfast. The programme revolved around Charpentier's varied settings of the Leçon de Ténèbres for Good Friday, bringing these pieces to audiences in Northern Ireland:
"The grant has enabled us to remain true to our core values of showcasing lesser-known works from the early music repertoire."
The concert sought to cultivate a sense of meditative stillness and inner reflection, and was warmly received by the audience.
Istante Collective - Haydn Expanded
Istante Collective's Haydn Expanded project included three concerts as part of the 3-day Baroquestock Festival at Heath Street Baptist Church in Hampstead. In collaboration with the Consone Quartet, the ensemble performed a unique range of repertoire, taking as a starting point the fact that arranging repertoire for different forces has long been common practice in music. They explored how masterpieces by Haydn were arranged by Haydn's favourite concert master Paul Wranitsky, among others, and how these arrangements 're-imagine' Haydn's compositions. The video below provides a glimpse into this fascinating project.
The Mozartists - Jommelli
The Mozartists presented Jommelli - A Celebration at Wigmore Hall, marking the 250th anniversary of the composer's death, to great acclaim. The orchestra was joined by leading young soloists Fflur Wyn, Ambroisine Bré and Hugo Brady for an evening of arias and ensembles from Jommelli's operas, including a number of UK premieres. Little-known today, Jommelli was regarded as one of Europe's leading composers during his lifetime, writing around 80 operas and numerous sacred works. Artistic director and conductor Ian Page commented:
"Jommelli has very much his own voice…He was really forward-thinking in the way the orchestra gets involved in the story, and some of it is searingly intense: almost like 18th-century film music."
Read more about Jommelli in this Continuo Connect feature.
Trouvere - Ludus Danielis
Trouvere performed the Ludus Danielis at the Medieval Music in the Dales Festival in Yorkshire. Based on a twelfth-century drama created at the Abbey of Beauvais, it tells the story of Daniel from the Old Testament. The narrative unfolds through song, but the surviving manuscript also includes stage directions, specifications for costumes and instrumental parts, suggesting it was no static work just for the abbey choir. Trouvere brought this fascinating drama to life for modern audiences.