The London International Festival of Early Music (LIFEM) is an English music festival which is devoted mainly to Baroque and Renaissance music. It takes place each November in Blackheath, London, at Blackheath Halls.
The festival was founded in 1973 and initially took place at the Royal College of Music before moving to the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and taking on the name Greenwich Early Music Festival. Each year, the Festival invites performers and exhibitors from across the world to perform concerts and exhibit their goods. [1] As well as Baroque music, LIFEM commissions new works for performance by the visiting ensembles (in 2020, they commissioned John Paul Jones to write The Tudor Pull for Fretwork [2] [3] ).
The festival has been known by several names in its history. It operated as the Greenwich Early Music Festival until 2016, when it made what was expected to be a temporary move to Blackheath. [4] Throughout its history it has had a close relationship with The Early Music Shop, which supports and runs the Festival.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 a series of recorded concerts under the name LIFEM: Digital replaced in-person events. [5] The festival also became a registered charity in 2020, [6] and appointed its first artistic director, Gill Graham. The trustees are Susannah Simons, Tony Millyard, Caro Barnfield and Chris Butler. [7]
Since the competition was established in 1985, LIFEM has hosted the final of the Society of Recorder Players / Moeck Competition for solo recorder performance. Winners of the biennial competition receive cash prizes and perform a solo recital at LIFEM in the year following their win.
Previous winners have included Tabea Debus, [8] Piers Adams, [9] Robert Ehrlich, [10] Ashley Solomon and Chris Orton. [11]
The LIFEM Young Ensemble Award is a biennial competition for ensembles specialising in historical performance practise and was established in 2018.
Previous winners:
• 2018: Palisander & Pypker/Muskens Duo
• 2020: Ensemble Pro Victoria & Ensemble Hesperi. [12]
Blackheath is an area in Southeast London, straddling the border of the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the London Borough of Lewisham. Historically within the county of Kent, it is located 1-mile (1.6 km) northeast of Lewisham, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south of Greenwich and 6.4 miles (10.3 km) southeast of Charing Cross, the traditional centre of London.
Pantagruel is an international early music ensemble specialising in semi-staged performances of Renaissance music. The group was formed in Essen, Germany at the end of 2002 by the English lutenist Mark Wheeler and the German born Dominik Schneider. With the addition of the Scottish soprano Hannah Morrison in 2004, the ensemble began to perform throughout Europe.
The English Concert is a baroque orchestra playing on period instruments based in London. Founded in 1972 and directed from the harpsichord by Trevor Pinnock for 30 years, it is now directed by harpsichordist Harry Bicket. Nadja Zwiener has been orchestra leader (concertmaster) since September 2007.
Hille Perl is a German virtuoso performer of the viola da gamba and lirone.
Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, originally called "The Philadelphia Renaissance Wind Band", is a Philadelphia-based early music ensemble.
Philip Cashian is an English composer. He is the head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
Tabea Zimmermann is a German violist who has performed internationally, both as a soloist and a chamber musician. She has been artist in residence of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2004, Zimmermann founded the Arcanto Quartet, a string quartet that performed until 2016. Several composers have written music for her, including György Ligeti, and she has made her own version of Bartók's Viola Concerto from the composer's sketches.
Bruno Sanfilippo is an Argentine pianist and composer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He currently resides in Barcelona, Spain. His sound has been described as an exploration of minimalist piano concepts and electroacoustic music. In 2015, he became one of the main exponents of the LIFEM 2015 festival, specializing in minimalist music.
Nigel North is an English lutenist, musicologist, and pedagogue.
Charles Daniels is an English tenor, particularly noted for his performances of baroque music. He is a frequent soloist with The King's Consort, and has made over 25 recordings with the ensemble on the Hyperion label.
Britten Sinfonia is a chamber orchestra ensemble based in Cambridge, UK. It was created in 1992, following an initiative from Eastern Arts and a number of key figures including Nicholas Cleobury, who recognised the need for an orchestra in the East of England. It is a flexible ensemble composed of chamber musicians in Europe. The players are freelance musicians who are employed on a project-by-project basis and the ensemble performs around 70 concerts per year and works with hundreds of people in the communities where the orchestra is resident.
Gabriel Garrido is an Argentinian conductor specialising in Italian baroque and the recovery of the baroque musical heritage of Latin America.
Mahan Esfahani is an Iranian-American harpsichordist.
BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme was launched in 1999 by Adam Gatehouse as part of the BBC's commitment to young musical talent.
The Texas Early Music Project is a performing arts ensemble based in Austin, Texas, that focuses on bringing audiences a closer knowledge and appreciation of Baroque music, Medieval music, Renaissance music, and early Classical-period music. The group uses historical instruments in keeping with historically informed performance practice. The ensemble was founded in 1987 by Daniel Johnson, who remains the group's artistic director. The group is classified as a non-profit organization and operates primarily on grant money and donations for individual and corporate supporters. Income is supplemented by ticket sales and merchandise sales. Texas Early Music Project is a member of Early Music America. Performers are primarily professional musicians from the Austin area, although performers visit from Texas at large, from all over the United States, and occasionally internationally.
The MA Festival Brugge, short for the festival Musica Antiqua Bruges in Bruges, Belgium, is a festival of early music and historically informed performances, started in 1960. The program includes concerts, master classes, conferences, visits in the region, exhibitions, instrument market, and international competitions that concentrates in a three-year cycle on organ, harpsichord, pianoforte and other period instruments, vocals, and baroque ensembles. The specialised festival is part of the Festival of Flanders.
Rogers Henry Lewis Covey-Crump is an English tenor noted for his performances in both early music and contemporary classical music. He has sometimes been identified as an haute-contre tenor. He has performed for over 50 years in choirs and ensembles such as the Hilliard Ensemble, and as a soloist. He has been especially in demand for the part of the Evangelist in Bach's St Matthew Passion and St John Passion. He also specialises in vocal tuning, and has written articles on the subject.
The tenor recorder is a member of the recorder family. It has the same form as a soprano recorder and an alto recorder, but it produces a lower sound than either; a still lower sound is produced by the bass recorder and great bass recorder.
The Early Music Shop is an early music store specialising in the sale and distribution of reproduction medieval musical instruments, with two showrooms situated in Saltaire and Snape Maltings, United Kingdom. It was founded by Richard Wood in 1968 and has become the largest supplier of early musical instruments worldwide.
Robert Ehrlich is a Northern Irish recorder player and university professor. From October 2015 until 2019, he was rector of the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin. Previously, he was rector of the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig from 2006 to 2015.