Fretwork Viol Consort with Mezzo-Soprano Helen Charlston

Programme: The music of Michael Nyman and Henry Purcell

Fretwork Viol Consort featuring:

Emilia Benjamin
Richard Boothby
Joanna Levine
Jonathan Rees
Sam Stadlen

In 2026, Fretwork will celebrate its 40th anniversary. In these last decades, they have explored the core repertory of great English consort music from Taverner to Purcell and commissioned a new repertory of music for viols.

The list of composers they have encouraged to create new works is like the role call of the most prominent writers of our time including Michael Nyman, Sir John Tavener, Gavin Bryars, Elvis Costello, Alexander Goehr, John Woolrich, Orlando Gough, Sally Beamish, Tan Dun, Barry Guy, Thea Musgrave, Nico Muhly, Sir James MacMillan and many others and, during the covid period, they premiered a new work by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones in the Early Music Festival in Blackheath.

In 2018 they performed and recorded a programme celebrating the music of Michael Nyman with the outstanding counter-tenor, Iestyn Davies; and in 2019 they toured North America with this programme.

They performed at Wigmore Hall twice in 2021, including a live-streamed performance on Good Friday, the first from Wigmore on that date for many decades, of Johann Sebastiani’s St Matthew Passion. They were awarded a substantial grant from Arts Council England to continue and maintain the continuity of their work.

Hailed “a rather special mezzo” (Music Web International), Helen Charlston is a young artist increasingly in demand in the UK and abroad.

She was winner of the 2023 BBC Music Magazine Vocal Awards, first prize in the 2018 London Handel Singing Competition, finalist in the 2019 Grange Festival International Singing Competition, wnner of the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize in the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and is a BBC New Generation Artist. Helen was a founder participant of the Rising Star of the Enlightenment programme, working alongside the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; a member of Les Arts Florissants Young Artist Programme (Jardin des Voix) for 2021/22; and is a 2018 City Music Foundation Artist.

She is regularly heard on the concert platform with some of the UK’s most prominent collaborative pianists and this coming season Helen makes her debut in San Francisco with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra singing Irene in Handel Theodora; as well as making her debuts with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, RIAS Kammerchor and Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Delicious food and drink is available at all concerts as well as a limited number of post concert suppers at the nearby Old Vicarage where you can dine with the musicians. Click here for menu options.