Bringers of Dreams: BREMF Emerging Artists announced for the 2026 festival

This year’s Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF), Bringers of Dreams, runs from 2 to 25 October 2026 with events focused on the four weekends. 

The BREMF Emerging Artist scheme is an important part of the Festival. As well as offering offering performance opportunities in the Festival, BREMF Emerging Artists are supported with advice, mentoring and training opportunities as well as a 4-day residency at Hawkwood College in Gloucestershire, offering the opportunity for development and growth. Alumni of the scheme are very much part of the BREMF ‘family’ and continue to be supported with references, opportunities and collaborations.

This year’s BREMF Emerging Artist ensembles are the five-part early music vocal ensemble Bruegel Consort, Les Acolytes, an ensemble specialising in French music of the 17th and 18th centuries, the instrumental ensemble Themelion, and Thow Cornwall Duo. All will be appearing at the BREMF Emerging Artists ensembles showcase and clubnight on Saturday 10 October at St Paul’s Church.

This year’s BREMF Emerging Artist vocalists are sopranos Ruby Skilbeck and Emma Warner, contralto Laura Toomey, and tenor Hugo Williamson. All will be involved in the performance of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with the London Handel Players on Friday 9 October 2026.

Other highlights of the festival include City of Dreams: a Florentine extravaganza with the Monteverdi String Band, BREMF Consort of Voices and The Royal Sackbut Collective (2025 BREMF Emerging Artists), Spiritato’s The Planets (Pre-imagined): an orchestral journey through the 17th-century solar system, The Fine Hand in a programme of European and North American Ballads, and Lassus’s Lamentations with Utopia Ensemble.

Dowland Day will feature a lunchtime concert with tenor Kieran White [see my review of his recent disc of Dowland and Danyel] and The Republic of Viols, an early evening concert with Dowland’s Foundry and a late night concert by soprano Ruby Hughes and lutenist Jonas Nordberg.

Full details from the BREMF website.