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# Early Music, Fresh Voices: BREMF’s Emerging Artists shine at St Paul’s
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/early-music-fresh-voices-bremfs-emerging-artists-shine-at-st-pauls/
- Published: 2026-10-15T12:34:25.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-15T12:34:25.000Z
- Description: BREMF’s Emerging Artists Showcase at St Paul’s dazzled: Les Acolytes’ courtly French excess, Vega’s mournful countertenor and lute songs, Themelion’s jaunty, tight Handel and Leclair, and Bruegel Consort’s Fayrfax, holding us at the edge of reverence. Superb homemade cakes too.
- Author: Eric Page
- Tags: Culture

**BREMF**’s ***Emerging Artists Showcase***, a fixture of the festival calendar, filled **St Paul’s** on **10 October** with four young ensembles and left me buoyant.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/TheEnsemble-DSC00766-2-1.jpg)

Photo credit Les Acolytes

[**Les Acolytes**](https://www.instagram.com/lesacolytes.uk/?ref=scenemag.co.uk) opened with a sweep through the French Baroque, taking in **Boismortier’s** pastoral opera *Daphnis et Chloé*, **Couperin and Leclair.** These four friends feel French repertoire is sorely neglected in concert programming, and they made a persuasive case. What delighted me most was the courtly excess: ornament heaped upon ornament, dances that sighed and preened as though all of Versailles were watching. This fresh, polished ensemble showed the French world of artifice, performance and flourish entertain rather well.

Read the [full programme details with performers ](https://www.bremf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/BREMF-Showcase.pdf?ref=scenemag.co.uk)and music. 

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/BREMF-Vega-Consort.png)

Credit Vega Consort

[**Vega Consort** ](https://www.instagram.com/vega%5Fconsort/?ref=scenemag.co.uk)turned the mood inward. Countertenor **Alexander Thow,** accompanied by lutenist **Augustin Cornwall-Irving**, gave us English songs by Lawes, Dowland and Danyel, all preoccupied with sleep, sorrow and a restless mind. Thow was excellent. His scalpel sharp, mournful voice carried the yearning up into the vaulted spaces of St Paul’s and let it linger there, it was a seriously impressive performance. Longing of this kind needs no gloss.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/15062026-ph-vasco-dell-oro-11-high-1-1.webp)

Themelion Ensemble photo credit

Then came a change of temperature. [**Themelion Ensemble**](https://www.themelionensemble.com/?ref=scenemag.co.uk), a quartet formed at the Milan conservatoire, brought trio sonatas by Handel and Leclair, both composers seduced by Italian style. Handel’s lyricism glowed with theatrical warmth, while Leclair set French poise against southern fire. The playing was jaunty, tight and sprightly, and it was enormous fun. You could see these musicians enjoying one another, and the audience happily caught the mood.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Utrecht_photo.jpeg)

Photo Credit: Bruegel Consort

The afternoon’s refulgent end belonged to [**Bruegel Consort**](https://www.bruegelconsort.com/?ref=scenemag.co.uk). It was easy to forget how early in their careers these five singers are. Their Tudor programme of **Taverner** and **Fayrfax** moved between courtly longing and prayerful devotion, and they explored the tension between the sacred and the sensual with real brilliance. Queer listeners have long found themselves in devotional music, with its ritual, its ecstasy and its adoration of a beloved figure, and Fayrfax’s soaring Marian antiphon made the reason plain. The singers took me to the very edge of contemplative reverence and kept me there, thrilled.

The interval cakes deserve a star, homemade with seasonal ingredients, they ere delicious, and I’d put the baker on a par with the performers. Both work with the humblest materials and hand-made care, and both trust the season and the occasion. A good cake, like a good period-instrument performance, follows old knowledge while leaving room for a personal flourish. Eating them in the architectural flamboyance of St Pauls, with Baroque dances still in the ear, and the equally traditional Kafkaesque queuing system, felt entirely apt.

[**BREMF** ](https://www.bremf.org.uk/?ref=scenemag.co.uk)has been [mentoring emerging artists ](https://www.bremf.org.uk/emerging-artists/?ref=scenemag.co.uk)since 2007, and has helped them take live music into Sussex schools. The Hawkwood residency and the generosity of the festival’s supporters clearly bear fruit. These ensembles are confident, curious and already distinctive.

Early music offers something rare, a living conversation with centuries of longing, artifice and devotion; today performed by young artists who make it feel fresh.

Full details of this years [BREMF musical programme on their website. ](https://www.bremf.org.uk/?ref=scenemag.co.uk)

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/825267962_122155440092423190_3545841126250785605_n-2-1.jpg)