^{BY PHILIP BURNETT | FIRST PUBLISHED 16 MAY 2026}

On early summer evenings across the English countryside, audiences gather beneath hammerbeam roofs, soaring arches and centuries-old stone vaults to hear music by Monteverdi, Gibbons, Dowland or Haydn in buildings where sound seems to linger in a way it rarely does elsewhere. A string ensemble in a small Devon church, plainchant drifting through a Gothic abbey, a viol consort performing in a Laudian interior; audiences drawn from the surrounding villages lingering over interval drinks or speaking with performers after the concert. These are the kinds of encounters that define Music in Country Churches.

Music in Country Churches grew out of a friendship between two music-loving visionaries – its founder Lady Fermoy (1908–1993) and its principal sponsor Sebastian Walker (1942–1991), founder of Walker Books. From that partnership came a simple but ambitious idea: to bring outstanding live music to rural communities with limited access to live performance while helping support the preservation of the historic churches that host them.

The first concerts took place on 20-21 May 1989 in one of the countryside’s most splendid churches: St Peter and St Paul, Salle, where audiences heard the Emerson Quartet and The Sixteen perform over the same weekend. More than three decades later, the series has brought musicians to over 60 churches across England. Initially centred in southern England, particularly Gloucestershire and Norfolk, the series has, over time, extended its reach to churches in a wider range of counties.

The concerts take place between late May and late July. For many years, they were clustered into a few weekends – usually three per season. Most are now single evenings of music, enabling visits to more counties. What distinguishes these concerts is not simply the repertoire, but the relationship between music and place. Churches were built for sound long before they became concert venues, and the architecture itself shapes the listening experience. In some spaces, music blooms upwards into vaulting; in others, it gathers with remarkable intimacy around performers and audience alike.

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^{A short video about Music in Country Churches, a charity that holds concerts in rural parish churches to raise funds for the maintenance of church buildings}

The 2026 season spans eleven counties – the largest geographical spread in the organisation’s history – including a first visit beyond the Humber for a concert in St Mary’s, Wycliffe in County Durham. It will be a Dowland anniversary programme with countertenor Francis Bamford and lutenist Byung-ook Kim. This concert will be followed by a further eleven, several featuring past and present recipients of Continuo Foundation grants.

Although the series is not tied to any one repertoire, Early Music has become an increasingly prominent part of the programming. Recent seasons have featured performances by I Fagiolini, Ensemble Molière, Saraband, Fiori Musicali, Vespri Segreti, Tenebrae and Chelys, among others. Continuo Connect has also become an important way of publicising our concerts, reaching new audiences and connecting with emerging Early Music performers and ensembles.

Music animates the church spaces in ways that reveal something of their original purpose, allowing audiences to experience the buildings not as static monuments but as living acoustic environments. The concerts offer audiences the chance to experience these buildings as they were once intended, with music resonating through the architecture for which they were designed. Early Music is particularly effective. In 2025, we put on a Gibbons anniversary concert given by Vespri Segreti and Chelys Consort of Viols in St Mary’s, Longworth (Oxfordshire). The connection was not biographical but atmospheric: Gibbons’s music, with its poised melancholy and liturgical richness, seemed entirely at home among the church’s Laudian features.

The 2026 season continues this dialogue between repertoire and architecture. On 13 June, Gothic Voices will perform music from the Old Hall manuscript at Dore Abbey in Herefordshire, a vast medieval space where chant once drifted through side chapels and along the abbey’s ambulatory before the Reformation. The programme offers more than historical reconstruction; it invites listeners into the sound-world of the period and allows them to experience how music and architecture once shaped one another.

Churches existed, and continue to exist, in society and reflect both religious and secular preoccupations. Sounds Historical’s programme, ‘What a Wonderful World’, for 23 July in St Nicholas, Dersingham (Norfolk) - part of a tour supported by Continuo Foundation - will explore what people in the early modern era found wonderful and awe-inspiring. Covering a variety of topics from mythology to mathematics, from astrology to astronomy, and from inexplicable weather to a lost whale, the music will show how the contemplation of things earthbound and heavenly were deeply woven into early modern thought and daily life.

The scale of the performances varies considerably, from intimate chamber groups to larger ensembles, from emerging ensembles to established touring artists. Last year, we hosted the Monteverdi String Band inside the intimate church at Newton St Cyres in Devon while Wiveton in Norfolk could offer more space to accommodate a 15-strong La Serenissima. The programming responds closely to the buildings themselves, allowing each church to determine the shape and atmosphere of the performance within it.

A new feature in 2025 was a come-and-sing held in All Saints, Burnham Thorpe (Norfolk). Known as ‘Nelson’s Church’ as it is where Admiral Nelson was baptised and spent his childhood, it seemed apt that Haydn’s ‘Nelson Mass’ should feature somehow. Nigel Short and four soloists from Tenebrae led an afternoon workshop and performance by a scratch choir and ensemble of local musicians. The mass had last been performed in the church over 25 years ago, and for those who were there, singing or in the audience, it was unforgettable as the music soared and the evening sun came in over the White Ensigns from Victory which now hang in the church.

What emerges from these concerts is not simply an audience, but a sense of local participation. Villagers help organise events, churches fill with volunteers, and performers often find themselves welcomed as temporary members of the community, rather than as visiting artists. In some places, the concerts have sparked regular music-making long after the final applause. The organisation has also long enjoyed the support of HM King Charles III, who, as Prince of Wales, played a role in its early development and has attended many of our concerts to date. Musicians frequently remark on the seriousness and generosity with which he engages with performers after concerts, often lingering to discuss programmes and performances in detail.

Music in Country Churches works closely with rural communities rather than simply bringing concerts into them. Local committees help organise each event, from publicity to practical arrangements, ensuring that the performances feel rooted in the places where they occur. In many villages, those first concerts have led to regular series of their own, leaving a musical legacy that extends well beyond a single evening. That may ultimately be what makes these concerts distinctive. They are more than performances placed inside historic buildings: they are encounters between music, architecture and landscape that briefly return these churches to the acoustic worlds for which they were built. For an hour or two on a summer evening, the distance between past and present can seem remarkably small.

The 2026 series of Music in Country Churches’ concerts starts on 30 May. The full line-up of Early Music concerts can be found on the Music in Country Churches profile on the Continuo Connect website.