Come and join us at the English Music Festival in a fortnight’s time! No, alas, not in person – but at our online EMF, from the safety and comfort of your own home!
Given the cancellation of the physical Festival (as a result of COVID-19 and subsequent government restrictions) we are doing the next best thing – an online Festival of concerts and talks, held at (broadly) the same times that the EMF events were planned to take place, and featuring as many of the same artists and composers as we could muster.
We have asked our artists wherever possible to provide live filmed concerts and talks from their homes in lock-down, and are delighted to have received talks and recitals from Roderick Williams, Paul Guinery, Duncan Honeybourne, Joseph Fort, Hilary Davan Wetton, Richard Blackford, Joseph Spooner and Nicholas Bosworth, Rupert Marshall-Luck, and Ensemble Hesperi. Where artists have not been able to provide us with a live film (due to their ensemble size, for instance) we have instead compiled a radio-style presentation of carefully-curated works from EM Records discs. (We regret that, due to licencing restrictions, we have not been able to use recordings from record labels other than the EMF’s own label.)
We will be charging for access to these online events, because part of our reason for setting this up (as well as to compensate our loyal and enthusiastic audiences for lack of a real event) was to be able to give some financial remuneration to musicians, so many of whom have lost vital work and income as a result of the current situation.
The process of viewing the events online will be simple and easy: once your ticket sale has been processed, I will email you with a link to enable you to access the event(s) in question. At the start time of the event, you will need to copy and paste the link into your browser and the film, talk or radio presentation will appear on the screen as a thumbnail – just click on the thumbnail, and the event will start automatically.
So, please do join us for this – as well as experiencing some lovely music (and being able to peek into artist’s homes in lockdown!), you will be supporting our musicians, and helping the Festival to recover the high costs of setting up and running this replacement event.
Finally, I would be hugely grateful if you could forward this email to as many interested friends, colleagues and family members as you can – the more people who support this event, the stronger the EMF will be in emerging from this situation!
So, position your computer in front of your favourite armchair, reach for a good bottle of wine, and settle down to enjoy a weekend of musical discovery.
With warmest regards as ever, Em Marshall-Luck, Founder-Director, The English Music Festival, Director, EM Records and EM Publishing