In 2016, we inaugurated a series of educational projects bringing together eminent professional musicians working in the early music field with advanced students studying historically informed techniques. In 2017, members of cornett and sackbut group QuintEssential mentored students from the Royal College of Music in the 1610 Vespers, and in 2018 Fred Jacobs and Peter Holman worked with a group of students playing lute-family instruments, keyboards and Baroque harp, recreating the sort of rich continuo group Monteverdi could call on in Mantua.

Also in 2018 our chairman, Stephen Varcoe, worked with members of Psalmody in workshops on the specialised techniques needed to sing Monteverdi in a historically informed manner. In 2019 he held a similar workshop in London for advanced students who were also mentored by Fred Jacobs and Peter Holman in the rehearsals leading up to the performance of Il ritorno d’Ulisse at the 2019 Festival.