MONDAY 29th JuNE 2026 at 6PM
Friends’ Event: Britten and our musical lives
This event at Valentine Voice Care in Lewes features conductor David Angus, the Music Director of Boston Lyric Opera, and pianist and co-Artistic Director of Lewes Festival of Song, Nancy Cooley, remembering their connections with Britten and his influence on music-making in Britain. Sofia Ticciati will sing, and of course there’ll be refreshments!
If you want to dip your toe in the water before committing to be a Friend, you are also welcome! To secure your seat please email info@lewesfestivalofsong.co.uk.
SUNDAY 5th July 2026 at 6PM
SONG RECITAL - SWEET LIGHT OF THE MUSE
Nicholas Mulroy and Nancy Cooley perform Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo and Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson in a special summer evening concert at St. Anne’s Church in Lewes.This concert is part of Britten: 50 years on, a series of celebratory concerts spread through the year to mark the anniversary of his death.
Benjamin Britten: Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo Op.22
Sonneti XVI, XXXI, XXX, LV, XXXVIII, XXXII, XXIV
Gabriel Fauré: La Bonne Chanson (Verlaine)
Une Sainte en son auréole
Puisque l’aube grandit
La lune blanche luit dans les bois
J’allais par des chemins perfides
J’ai presque peur, en vérité
Avant que tu ne t’en ailles
Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été N’est-ce pas?
L’hiver a cessé
Interval
Gabriel Fauré: Poème d’un Jour (Charles Grandmougin)
Rencontre
Toujours
Adieu
Roger Quilter: Three Shakespeare Songs
Come away, death
O mistress mine
Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Rebecca Clarke:
Down by the Salley Gardens (Yeats)
A Dream (Yeats)
Ivor Gurney: from Five Elizabethan Songs
Orpheus (Shakespeare)
Vaughan Williams: Silent Noon (Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
This concert is dedicated to Felicity Lott, a dear friend to our Festival
Festival Weekend
We bring you five concerts spread over the weekend of 31st October and 1st November
All concerts are at St. Anne’s Church in Lewes, except our late-evening Saturday event
Tickets for the Festival will be released soon and will be available through this website.
SaturDAY 31st October 2026
Venue:
St Anne's, Lewes
Time:
2.30pm
Scottish soprano Eve Pearson Maxwell with pianist Francesca Lauri, winners of the 2025 Ashburnham English Song Award, bring us a folk and sometimes Scottish-inspired concert including Villa Lobos, Grieg, Brahms, James Macmillan and Rodrigo.
Venue:
St Anne's, Lewes
Time:
7pm
Mezzo-soprano Joanna Harries and pianist Sholto Kynoch, founder of the Oxford International Song Festival, will perform ‘Letters from Scandinavia’, weaving together music and text that follows in the footsteps of intrepid nineteenth century women journeying in the ‘wild north’.
Venue:
tbc
Time:
9pm
Buy a drink at the bar and relax to the music of Merlin and Polina Shepherd (clarinets, voice, piano) as they present a somewhat darker world of Klezmer for Hallowe’en night.
SUNDAY 1st November 2026
Venue:
St Anne's, Lewes
Time:
2.30pm
Mezzo-soprano Sally Bradshaw, pianist Julian Broughton and actor Gareth Armstrong bring a words and music concert called God Almighty First Planted a Garden, focused on the poetry of George Herbert and song settings of his and other poets’ words.
Venue:
St Anne's, Lewes
Time:
7pm
For our Festival Finale, tenor James Gilchrist, pianist Nancy Cooley, the Elmore string quartet, and cor anglais and flautist, perform Warlock’s haunting The Curlew to poems by Yeats, Gurney’s song-cycle Ludlow and Teme for tenor and string quartet, and more Yeats settings for voice and piano by Muriel Herbert and Rebecca Clarke.