Manchester Baroque awarded Continuo Foundation grant for Fantasticarie
We're delighted to announce that we have been awarded funding from the Continuo Foundation, the national charity dedicated to supporting historical performance across the UK.
This generous grant will support Fantasticarie—a bold project celebrating the dazzling invention of early 17th-century Italian chamber music, a style rarely heard in Manchester. At its heart is our concert Phantasticus, taking place on Saturday 25th April at St Ann’s Church Central Manchester which showcases the dramatic, capricious style and theatrical freedom of 17th-century Italy.
The programme includes music by some of the great innovators of the period scored for violins and theorbo (the biggest member of the lute family!)—Uccellini, Fontana, Marini, Castello, Piccinini and Castaldi—composers who shaped the expressive possibilities of instrumental music.
Alongside, we are thrilled to be partnering with the Olympias Foundation to deliver workshops for disadvantaged young musicians, giving them the chance to explore this extraordinary musical style first-hand.
