Solomon's Knot turns 10 years old in 2018.  What began a decade ago as an experiment between friends to buck the routine of the classical music treadmill has changed and evolved into "the most interesting group currently on the oratorio scene" (Neumarkter Nachrichten, 2017). 

But what we do includes far more than oratorio: from the multimedia jungle of Gesualdo and his contemporaries in The Discovery of Bomarzo, to the zany, anonymous 17th-century opera l'Ospedale, the collective's flexibility, daring, and willingness to collaborate has propelled us through the last 10 years, and promises exciting things for the future.

We have three projects lined up for the first half of this year: see Next Performances.  We're also planning big things for the end of the year and beyond - watch this space!

 We're hitting St Mary's Nottingham and St John's Smith Square with the Mass in B minor in December.

We are thrilled to announce that tickets are now on sale for our Nottingham performance of the Mass in B minor by JS Bach at St Mary's Church, Lace Market, Nottingham on 16 December.  Get your tickets HERE from Lakeside Arts.

electrifying from beginning to end Westmoreland Gazette
more info under Next Performances

Performances
Saturday 16 December 2017, 19:00. St Mary's in the Lace Market, Nottingham, UK Tickets from Lakeside Arts
Monday 18 December 2017, 19:30. St John's Smith Square, London. SJSS Christmas Festival. Tickets

We've also uploaded an excerpt from our performance at Spitalfields Music Winter Festival last year:

despite all the perfection of modern baroque performance, there can often be something missing - Solomon's Knot have perhaps found the answer Stephen Pritchard in The Observer

J.S. Bach Mass in B minor BWV 232
16 December 2017, 7pm. St Mary's Church, Lace Market, Nottingham, UK. Tickets from Lakeside Arts (booking opens ca. 29 September)
18 December 2017, 7.30pm. St John's Smith Square, London, UK (booking open)

We are very much looking forward to reviving our Mass in B minor in Nottingham and London.  Booking is open for our performance in the St John's Smith Square Christmas Festival, where we return after our "Christmas in Leipzig" performance there in 2015.   We are also very excited to make our debut in Nottingham, where we bring the piece to the wonderful medieval church of St Mary in the Lace Market. 

Stephen Pritchard of the The Observer gave our Spitalfields performance (December 2016) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
"organic music-making at its most sophisticated"
"great musicianship allied to unaffected communication made everyone in the hall feel included"
Read the review in full here.

We would love to see you at one of our performances, and share the power of this astonishing music with you.

We are very grateful for the support of the RHL Foundation for our UK Mass in B minor performances.

Our two most recent projects, JS Bach's Johannes-Passion in Arnstadt and Snape, and Handel's Messiah in Halle and Regensburg, drew very strong responses from the audiences in Germany and the UK.

After Snape John Passion, Libby Purves  mentioned us in a comment piece in The Times, describing the performance as "dramatic and thrilling".  The Thüringer Allgemeine chose the words "refreshing and virtuosic" for their review of the Arnstadt performance - read the full article in German here.

Is was very interesting for us to explore the Dublin version of Messiah for the first time, taking it to the Händel-Festspiele in Halle (in the Dom, where Handel was organist for a year) and returning to the wonderful Dreieinigskeitskirche (Holy Trinity Church) in Regensburg as part of the Tage Alter Musik.  The full-length 12/8 version of "Rejoice greatly" was a pleasure to discover, and some unfamiliar cuts and truncations, as well as a complete new chorus ("Break forth into joy") kept us on our toes with this old favourite.  Below is the press response (links all to the german reviews):

"the level of dramatic tension, dance-like elegance, and emotional colour that Solomon's Knot drew out of the venerable oratorio was un-heard of in the truest sense" Süddeutsche Zeitung

"a great benchmark performance" Mittelbayerische Zeitung

"Heaven opens over Regensburg" Onetz.de

The Barbican Centre has today announced exciting plans for a celebratory Bach Weekend in June 2018. We are delighted to share our news that we will be performing in the festival, in a programme of Motets by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christoph Bach at St Giles' Cripplegate on Saturday, 16 June 2018.

Solomon's Knot will feature alongside world-class Bach interpreters: Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists will perform three programmes of Bach Cantatas across the weekend, and Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Jean Rondeau will each present solo recitals. 

We are thrilled to form part of this celebratory weekend! General booking will go on sale on Friday, 3 February 2018. 

Find out more about Solomon's Knot's performance in Bach Weekend 2018 

It is with great sadness that we at Solomon’s Knot learnt of the death of Serena Fenwick on Christmas Eve 2016, after a fight with cancer. 

Though she would never have put herself in the limelight, Serena was a significant part of the story of Solomon’s Knot since it’s inception as Solomon Choir and Orchestra in 2008, providing a donation that helped make our very first performance possible.  This gave us the confidence to take the first steps on the journey that has led us to where we are today.

But her support extends far further than that.  She followed the development of Solomon’s Knot with great interest, long after she was no longer able to travel easily to performances due to an accident.  Serena supported us generously at key moments and regular intervals, and as such became an indispensable part of the story of Solomon’s Knot.

Furthermore, Serena played a key role in the training and development of two of our members, sponsoring the scholarships of Jonathan Sells and Michal Czerniawski at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, as well as providing logistical and other support.

She was an extremely generous person, interested above all in the talent and potential of young singers, and she did a huge amount to promote these, through her association with the Guildhall, British Youth Opera, and in the promotion of art song.  Serena Fenwick’s humility, decency, and generosity were remarkable and inspirational, and she will be sorely missed.

We're thrilled that our performance on Sunday at Spitalfields Music Winter Festival has attracted some fabulous reviews! Thank you so much to all those who joined us for this, one of our most ambitious projects to date. 

We'd like to share with you just a few of our favourite responses: 
Bachtrack 5 stars: "a revelatory experience – so intense, immediate, and inclusive."

The Times 4 stars: "progress, light and great power" 
- accompanied by a tweet from The Times critic @msannapicard "Professional cool crumbles as I scrabble for a tissue in the Dona nobis pacem."

"Bowled over by the most compelling and beautiful B minor mass I've heard" @JDLiteracyTrust

"The glow of yesterday’s performance still hovers over me. It was magical, and refreshing" (Solomon's Knot supporter)

"I haven't enjoyed a performance and process so much for a long time; it was an extraordinary thing to be a part of" (Solomon's Knot performer)

Photo courtesy of James Berry Photography

We are excited to be able to share this video from Aldeburgh Festival which captures part of our performance of 'The Discovery of Bomarzo' back in June 2016. In this project, Solomon's Knot joint Artistic Director James Halliday and five singers of our singers collaborated with the award-winning artist and composer Mira Calix, who created an electronic sonic ‘garden’ which surrounds a 'sound sculpture' of Italian madrigals dating from around 1600.  Read more about the project here.