Worcester Early Music

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Baroquathon 2020 going online!

We can’t get together this year for our annual fundraising Baroquathon – so we’re going online instead.

We invite you to submit audio or video recordings of a short piece written before c.1850, which we will upload to our website between Friday 8 May (the proposed date of our 2020 Baroquathon) and Sunday 31 May (the date our cancelled Festival should have finished).

As usual, we suggest a minimum donation of £5 per entry. The money raised will be shared between the Elgar School of Music (where our Baroquathon usually takes place) Worcestershire Early Music (to go towards outreach, as well as supporting the musicians who would have been performing in our Festival) and Help Musicians UK’s Coronavirus Financial Hardship Fund (Spotify is matching donations to a number of charities, including this one, up to a total of $10 million). You can donate through the Give as You Live button on our website, make a bank transfer (details on request) or send us a cheque – or just make a cash donation when we next see you!

Please send your file (maximum size 8MB) in MP3 or MP4/.mov format to jill@daviesmusic.com, or use WeTransfer (or similar), or Dropbox. Please remember to give us your name and the title and composer of your piece; and also rename the file to include some of these details.

We are also planning to include some submissions on our Facebook and YouTube pages so please let us know if you would prefer us not to use your recording on those social media sites.

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Donate to Worcestershire Early Music here

We are currently raising money from our online Baroquathon, which will be divided between Worcestershire Early Music (to support the musicians who were to be performing in our 2020 Festival), the Elgar School of Music, and Help Musicians UK (Spotify is matching the money raised by various musical charities including Help Musicians up to a maximimum of $10 million).

We’re suggesting a minimum of £5 per entry for the Baroquathon, but please give as much as you can afford.

Ensemble Echos

Five o clock Baroque

Ensemble Echos have recorded a series of mini concerts of Baroque sonatas from St Helen’s Church, Worcester, the final one being available from Sunday 6th December on youtube.

The whole series is available on Youtube: search Ensemble Echos and find Claire Horacek and friends playing !

Enjoy!

Festive Season 2020

If you are missing making festive music with friends, here’s a couple of suggestions.

Pam Smith invites you to Virtual Recorders at Christmas.

19th-25th December 10-10.30am

Join her for half an hour every morning on the run up to Christmas for recorder duets. She’ll mostly play from Mediaeval Christmas Carols ed Greg Lewin and published by Hawthorn Music EE6. (available from alyson@hawthornsmusic.co.uk)

You will need a treble and a tenor recorder and access to Zoom.

Pam is raising money for the Cheltenham branch of the Samaritans; you can donate via hhtps://uk.virginmoney.giving.com/PamelaSmith37

Please email; jan.epps57@gmail.com if you would like to join in.

Border Marches Early Music Forum has run two successful online workshops and is now inviting singers and instrumentalists to enrol for an online workshop on December 22nd from 7.30pm -9.00pm when David Hatcher will compare and contrast two settings of Praeter rerum serium through the wonders of Zoom.

See www.bmemf.org.uk for details and how to book

enquiries contact johnjjwren@gmail.com

Autumn News

The Swan Theatre has been offered to Worcester Concert as a Covid secure venue for their opening concert on Sunday October 11th. To this end the Musical and Amicables will perform a selection of Baroque pieces.

Kate (violin/viola), Claire (viol), Andy (Bassoon/recorder) and Martin (keyboard) have played for us and for Worcester Concert Club in the past so they will need no introduction, and you can see Andy and Claire’s contributions to our online Baroquathon below.

However what you may not know is that three of them are tutors at the Elgar School of Music, which has taken quite a financial hit during this Covid ridden summer. So this concert is to be given in aid of the Elgar School.

Worcestershire Early Music has collaborated in previous years with the school for the annual Baroquathon. The school offers tuition to the young and not so young, rising stars and keen amateurs, as well as therapy for those with varying need. While individual lessons continue mostly online and some small groups are able to meet, the larger ensembles and choirs are unable to get together as yet.

Tickets for Sunday 11th October at 3pm will be available at the door at £17 (£5 for students) and we hope you will feel safe to venture out and support this joint effort. Please let me know ( barbara.wem@gmail) if you intend to come as the theatre has a limited number of places and we wouldn’t want to be turning people away.

Divisions for viol by Gottfried Finger

Gottfried Finger – Ground in G minor (The Division Flute)

The second of two lovely grounds for flute and continuo first published in The Division Flute in 1706, with the solo line here played on viol by Claire Horacek.

The accompaniment is available to download for a small charge, along with a growing number of other pieces, from Cat on the Keys Music, many thanks to Martin Perkins for these!