Our two Artistic directors are Deborah Roberts and Clare Norburn

Clare Norburn (right in picture) isn’t really sure whether her true vocation is singing, being an early music entrepreneur or fundraising. When she isn't attempting to learn weird medieval dialects in order to perform medieval music, she spends hours writing press releases and mailing everyone she can think of to get them to support BREMF. Sadly, her knowledge of medieval dialects has yet to come into its own in her role as co-Artistic Director of Brighton Early Music Festival, although the compulsive mailing is handy.
In between updating the mailing lists, Clare sings with the early music ensembles Eclipse, Pastorella, Vox Animae and The Troubadours. She also works part-time for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment as the Development Manager in charge of Corporate and Trust-Giving. Clare lives in North London with her husband, Alastair and their three cats.

For her entire career Deborah Roberts has always enjoyed a varied mix of activities. After completeing an MA in editing and interpreting renaissance and baroque music she combined a growing singing career with keeping a foot in the more academic camp. For a couple of years she worked part time on the BBC proms and then as a copy editor for the OUP journal Early Music. Eventually the singing took over more and she spent over 20 years as a key member of the Tallis Scholars, touring the world, making a number of prize winning recordings and, most of all, gaining a deep insight into renaissance polyphony. To keep her editorial and research skills alive she also founded the ensemble Musica Secreta - maybe in part to find out just how involved in making music real women had been in the 16th and 17th centuries! (She is known to get a little 'irritated' by the assumption that all the music she performed with the Tallis Scholars was exclusively sung by boys!!)Through her work with Musica Secreta she had the opportunity to spend 18 months as a temporary research fellow with the University of Southampton, alongside Dr Laurie Stras, developing new repertoire for performance by women's voices. Some groundbreaking and award winning recordings have resulted from their collaboration.

Deborah began directing Brighton Consort in 1998 shortly after moving from London to Sussex. Although she had never conducted a choir before, their help and encouragement got her through the learning stages and she now regularly conducts choral courses in many parts of the world. She can still hardly believe she is doing it!

Starting a festival with Clare is one of the strangest and most unpredictable she has ever done.... and it all started with a chat about publicity swaps, over a cup of coffee. But without the support of members of Brighton Consort, it would never have taken off as it has....... and she might have had a much quieter life!

Deborah is now living on the seafront in Hove (actually) with her jazz pianist son, but she does slip away to Italy when she can.

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