Performers
Psalmody
Psalmody is the resident chamber choir of the Festival and is regularly accompanied by Essex Baroque Orchestra or smaller ensembles derived from it. Its members are drawn from the best choral singers in East Anglia and further afield.
Essex Baroque Orchestra
Essex Baroque Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Festival and is one of the most accomplished semi-professional period-instrument orchestras. It normally uses Baroque instruments, but changes to Classical instruments for late eighteenth-century music.
The John Jenkins Consort
The John Jenkins Consort, formed in 2013, is named after East Anglia’s greatest seventeenth-century composer. It brings together leading instrumentalists associated with the Festival, playing Renaissance and Baroque violins, viols and continuo instruments, including harpsichord, chamber organ, theorbo and Baroque harp. It is the resident ensemble for The Monteverdi Project.
Soloists
Over the years the Festival has been pleased to welcome many distinguished soloists from the early music world in Britain and abroad. These include Catherine Bott, John Potter, Joseph Cornwell and Stephen Varcoe, the keyboard players Gustav Leonhardt, Trevor Pinnock, Richard Burnett, Maggie Cole, Steven Devine and Robin Bigwood, the string players Elizabeth Wallfisch and Pavlo Bezosiuk (violin), Mark Caudle and Susanne Heinrich (viol) and Sebastian Comberti (violincello), the wind players Rachel Brown and Rachel Latham (flute), Gail Hennessey (oboe), Colin Lawson (clarinet), Anneke Scott (horn) and Crispian Steele-Perkins (trumpet), the lutenists Fred Jacobs and David Miller, and the harpist Frances Kelly.
Several concerts a year are given by eminent early music ensembles as part of the August Festival and the Autumn to Spring Concert Series. Chamber groups have included the Medieval ensembles Gothic Voices, the Orlando Consort, Duo Trobaritz and Joglaresa, the Renaissance ensembles London Baroque, the Parley of Instruments, the European Brandenburg Ensemble and the Gonzaga Band, and the Classical ensembles Trio Goya, the Etesian Ensemble and the Eroica String Quartet.