10-26 October 2025 with pre-festival events from 20 September at Various venues across Brighton & Hove
BREMF 2025: Love
Read about our 2025 programme - here's what's coming up this autumn. Tickets will go on sale on 23 July for Festival Friends and 4 August for all.
Date & Time: 10-26 October 2025 with pre-festival events from 20 September
Ticket price: Tickets start at £5 and will go on sale to Festival Friends on 23 July, and on general sale on 4 August 2025
The 2025 Festival takes the theme of Love, which was chosen by our late artistic director Deborah Roberts. She wrote “Love is a word we throw around without thinking of its complexity but we start with a love of music. Music has been used since ancient times to add the ineffable emotional feeling to words.”
Deborah went on to outline six types of love as defined by the ancient Greeks, and our new co-artistic directors Hannah Ely and Olwen Foulkes have taken four of those and used them as the inspiration around which to programme their first Festival for BREMF.
The pre-festival period, and each of the three main festival weekends will each explore a different type of love – Philia, Xenia, Agape and Eros.
Pre-Festival Period: PHILIA – Friendship and shared interests
Saturday 20 September BREMF Consort of Voices Palestrina Crawl
Saturday 27 September Choral workshop
Thursday 2 October Early music open mic/jam session at The Rose Hill
Saturday 4 October Family day, including OAE TOTS concerts for pre-schoolers
Sunday 5 October Instrumental workshop & baroque dance workshop
Weekend 1: XENIA – Welcoming people, showing love for strangers, hosting
Friday 10 October
UK Premiere of Les Caractères de l’Amour opera by Mlle Duval (1736) with the BREMF Players, Ensemble Molière and the Baroque Collective Singers
Saturday 11 October
Lunchtime concert with Nardus Williams and Elizabeth Kenny
Evening concert by Ayres Extemporae, winners of the York Early Music International Young Artists Competition 2024
Sunday 12 October
The Gesualdo Six Queen of Hearts
Weekend 2: AGAPE – Celebrating a love of nature, and divine love
Thursday 16 October
Gibbons programme with BREMF Consort of Voices
Friday 17 October
Early evening concert based around Telemann’s Water Music featuring primary school pupils alongside the BREMF Community Choir and members of Ensemble Augelletti, Fieri Consort and Lowe Ensemble
Saturday 18 October
Morning SongPath walk with Joanna Harries and Angela Hicks
Afternoon BREMF Emerging Artists Showcase
Evening BREMF Emerging Artists Clubnight
Sunday 19 October
Convent music with Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens
Weekend 3: EROS – Exploring romantic love, desire, and loss
Friday 24 October
Vache Baroque Out of the Deep: poetry and prose including extracts from Oscar Wilde’s introspective masterpiece, alongside music including Purcell songs
Saturday 25 October
Lunchtime concert by medieval ensemble Per Sonat
Evening performance of Monteverdi Tancredi e Clorinda by La Fonte Musica
Sunday 26 October
On the Wings of a Song lieder programme with Helen Charlston and the Consone Quartet
