Welcome

There are seven concerts in the second half of the 2024/25 Leamington Music Winter Season. This resumes on 24 January with the Coull Quartet embarking on their next 50 years together having celebrated their big anniversary in 2024. We follow this with a first visit on 14 February from the Fibonacci Quartet who are enjoying a bumper season with concerts across Europe. We welcome back the Monteverdi String Band to St Mary’s Church, Warwick on 25 February who bring with them Hannah Ely (soprano) and Toby Carr (lute & theorbo) to transport us to Italy to reimagine the Madrigal.

Sunday 2 March brings our annual double-header day in the Royal Spa Centre from Ensemble 360 with the Family Concert in the morning  – this year it’s the turn of Giddy Goat – and then a fabulous programme of String Quartets and Clarinet Quintets in the afternoon. We finish the series in the Pump Rooms on 14 March with a rather different kind of quartet in the form of Raga Garage who bring us an intoxicating fusion of East and West to enlighten and entertain, and our season concludes on 18 March in St Mary’s with another new young group – Rune – who, championed by the Brighton Early Music Festival, are making strides to reacquaint audience ears with the true delights of Mediaeval music.

We warmly invite you to the 2025 Leamington Music Festival which commemorates 150 years since Maurice Ravel’s birth and 50 years since Arthur Bliss’s death, and we explore where the worlds of these two composers meet – the composers and musicians they worked with, learned from, and influenced, form a fascinating web from which to draw inspiration.

With performances from Trio Shaham-Erez-Wallfisch, the Dominic Alldis Trio, Mark Bebbington piano, Sinfonia of Birmingham and Michael Seal conductor, Roderick Williams baritone and Andrew West piano, the Carducci String Quartet and Emma Johnson clarinet, Deniz Sensoy violin and Alessio Ennea piano, and the Sacconi String Quartet with Simon Callaghan piano, we welcome old friends and new with programmes to offer something for everyone in our flagship four-day musical celebration over the Bank Holiday weekend.

There’s late-night jazz to bring a new element to our Festival and a new exhibition, ‘Musical Colours’, from our Artist-in-Residence, Jane Williams, on display throughout the weekend to bring music and art together in the most wonderful way.

If you’d like to join us for the whole Festival, the Saver Ticket is the way to do it with a saving of 20% on the best seats for all concerts and the talk – get in touch with me by email on helen@leamingtonmusic.org or call 01926 774395 to book yours.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Helen Beecroft, Artistic Director