CONTINUO ANNOUNCES NEW GRANT AWARDS
- Continuo Foundation
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
19 March 2026
£106,000 awarded to 30 Early Music projects across the UK
Grantees include 9 emerging ensembles formed since 2020
Round 11 includes an additional £6,000 grant from the Purcell Society
Total grant funding awarded since 2021 climbs to £1,176,000
Continuo Foundation has announced the recipients of its eleventh round of grants, awarding more than £100,000 to support Early Music projects across the UK. The awards showcase the breadth and vitality of the sector, with funded projects spanning opera productions, cross-arts collaborations, recordings, and performances designed to reach audiences beyond traditional concert settings and far from city-centres.
The grants also reflect Continuo’s wider role in supporting the Early Music ecosystem, with funding benefiting emerging groups, touring activity, festivals and new partnerships.
Tina Vadaneaux, Founder and CEO of Continuo, comments:
‘We received a record number of applications in the latest round, demonstrating the extraordinary creativity of the Early Music community across the UK, and reminding us that Early Music is a living, vibrant art form. I would like to thank our expert panel for their careful deliberation and congratulate all the recipients whose work enriches audiences and ensures that these remarkable musical traditions continue to thrive.’
A particular feature of Round 11 is an additional £6,000 in funding offered by the Purcell Society, and matched by Continuo, to mark their 150th anniversary. Two Purcell projects were selected for support. The Monteverdi String Band’s Wandering Prince, Unhappy Queen is created in collaboration with the Roman River Festival. Inspired by Dido and Aeneas, the project combines Purcell’s music with readings from Virgil, songs and ballads to restore the wider dramatic and literary context of the story for modern audiences.
The second Purcell-focused award will enable Istante Collective to create a new fully-staged production of King Arthur. The ensemble notes that while the music is regularly performed, the full Restoration masterpiece is rarely presented complete. Their production will restore the spoken word and dance elements that are ‘rarely performed but an essential part of the work’s identity’.
Continuing the opera strand of the awards, Vache Baroque will create a production of Francesca Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero (1625), the oldest known opera written by a woman composer, for the Buxton International Festival, and the English Haydn Orchestra is supported for its Haydn’s Musical World concert series at the eponymous festival in Bridgnorth.
Several grants will help bring Early Music further afield, reaching underserved audiences. Touring projects from the Bloomsbury Players, Linarol Consort of Viols, The Morley Consort and Wessex Baroque Collective will take performances to venues across the Lake District, Scotland, Wales, Devon, Southwest England, and London.
The range of projects also highlights the importance of collaboration. Ensemble Hesperi will work with the Buskaid Soweto String Ensemble of South Africa in what the ensemble describes as ‘an artistic and educational collaboration’ grown from a ‘shared passion… for high-quality, historically informed performance.’
In the studio, The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen will make world-premiere recordings of Alessandro Poglietti’s arrangements of motets by Bonifazio Graziani. The ensemble says these recordings will allow audiences to hear ‘these ear-tickling masterpieces’ and compare them with the original monody versions.
This round also points to the future potential of the sector, with support for nine recently formed groups, including The Royal Sackbut Collective, which will use its grant to present a launch concert for its debut album.
For details of all 30 projects supported by the awards, please click on the button below. To see where and when grant-supported concerts will take place, keep an eye on the Continuo Connect What's On concert listings.
Congratulations to all our new grantees, and thank you to all
the generous donors who made these grant awards possible!
