Apollo’s Cabinet is an early music ensemble founded in 2018 at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Since then, it has always grown and performs in a flexible line-up to make the programs diverse.
His focus is on creating storyline based programs, interweaving different types of art, rethinking historical performance practice to make it more accessible to modern audiences, often through facilitation, readings, song, poetry, historical dance forms, acting and viedography.
Its program “Home & Away”, based on poems by the British poet Brian Nisbet, earned the ensemble the “Brian Nisbet Early Music Prize”, as well as being a recent winner of the “Tunnell Trust Award” for the years 2022/2023.
“Apollo’s Cabinet add stories and scenarios to their music to highlight already dramatic music, while virtually dissolving the interactive barrier between stage and audience.” Bognor Regis Observer.
In May 2022, the ensemble was the joint winner of the Göttingen Handel Competition with its program “A star is born – the making of Kitty Clive”. It played a production that takes us through the life of the actress and singer, a kind of baroque musical that was praised by the Göttinger Tagblatt as an “unconventional and convincing” concept in which “baroque meets Bridgerton.”
In 2019, the group was one of the artists selected for the Brighton Early Music Festival Live! Scheme” and was invited to perform at the main festival and the “Lake District Festival” in 2020, as well as playing lunchtime concerts and evening recitals in numerous London churches. During the summer of 2019, it was the very first ensemble selected for the “Gstaad Baroque Academy” as part of the Menuhin Festival.
The ensemble is dedicated to the musical education of children and adults alike, and its members have performed workshops and educational concerts in collaboration with the Centre for Young Musicians (CYM), the Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF), the English National Opera (ENO) and the Wigmore Hall Chamber Tots in Taunton, Peterborough, Brighton and London, as well as in numerous schools and music centers in the South of England.
In the coming season Apollo’s Cabinet has been invited to the :alpenarte in Schwarzenberg, the Schattenburg Concerts in Feldkirch and the Felix! Festival Köln (as part of his prize at the Göttigen Händen Competition) to perform their program “Charles Burney – Baroque Travel blogger”. It is currently producing a new interactive musical about the “Cold Case” of the murdered Jean-Marie Leclair, generously supported by the Continuo Foundation and “Angel Early music”.
In 2023 the ensemble will tour Scotland with the support of Tunnell Trust.