Ahead of our Proms debut, we spoke to Jon Jacob of the Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast to discuss how Solomon's Knot prepares and rehearses ahead of performances. Jonny Sells (bass & artistic director), Inga Maria Klaucke (bassoon), James Toll (violin), Kate Symonds-Joy (alto), and Tom Herford (tenor)  joined in conversation.

Have a listen!

We've been working with director Tama Matheson for our dramatised Purcell performance at the Ryedale Festival and spoke to him about his ideas for this performance during rehearsals.

"Purcell's music seems to cry out for some manner of theatrical treatment​"

Read the Q&A with Tama

Ahead of our Prom debut on 14 August, we performed live at BBC Radio 3 In Tune in a special broadcast from the Imperial College Union building to celebrate the first night of the Proms. In view of our upcoming residency at the Ryedale Festival, we played some lovely tunes from the fantasy world of Purcell's Fairy Queen - Act V.

Listen back to the broadcast 

Looking ahead to December, we are delighted to announce our next concerts for the Christmas season. With some wonderfully emotive French music for Christmastide we turn to Marc-Antoine Charpentier with two expressive sacred dramas about the arrival of baby Jesus: In nativitatem Domini Canticum H.416 and the Pastorale sur la naissance de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ H.483.

This is a rare chance to hear us perform music from 17th-century France. Catch us at the York Early Music Christmas Festival on Saturday 7 December where we'll be making our debut, or at St John's Smith Square on Monday 9 December.

From 23 to 27 July we will be ensemble-in-residence at the 2019 Ryedale Summer Festival. Visiting  Scarborough and York we present three different concert programmes: Bach Cantatas for the Feast of St Michael and the Magnificat, our JS & JC Bach Motet programme and A Purcell Pageant in a dramatised concert performance with director Tama Matheson.

Grab your tickets soon if you fancy joining us on this Yorkshire summer retreat!

More details

This is what the Leipziger Volkszeitung writes of our performance of the 1725 version of the St John Passion at the Bachfest Leipzig, adding it "would also have delighted Johann Sebastian Bach”.

From Mexico, Texas, Tennessee, Wisconsin to Japan, Israel and New Zealand - more than 14k people were able to follow the live-stream of our performance on Facebook, thanks to our wonderful hosts of the Bachfest Leipzig.

We're truly overwhelmed by the terrific response. Recht herzlich vielen Dank!

Jonathan Rees will be performing excerpts of J.S. Bach's Cello Suites in between motets as part of our concert at St. George's Bristol next week, on Friday 7 June. We caught up with the baroque cellist during his preparations:

"I'll be trying to create the impression of a texture as rich as the choral texture of the motets, even though this is impossible!"

​Read the Q&A with Jon

​Ahead of our performance at St George's Bristol, ClassicFM shares a video of "the most divine music ever written". This recording of our 'Jesu, meine Freude' was filmed last year in June at the Barbican Bach Weekend. For more clips of the motets we performed, head over to our YouTube channel.

We're very excited that we can finally announce our biggest performance this year: an appearance at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London on Wednesday 14 August 2019, in a late night Prom (no.38) at 10.15pm.

We will be performing some of JS Bach's most powerful and dramatic sacred cantatas: those for the Feast of St Michael and All Angels.  Here, trumpets and timpani are to the fore, and the battle between earth and heaven is vividly portrayed. 

Tickets go on sale on 11 May, and with 5,500 of them to sell, we hope that our loyal followers will alert as many of their friends, relations, and acquaintances as possible.  This is going to be a great leap in the history of Solomon's Knot!

Thomas Herford will be one of the notably two Evangelists in our St John Passion at Wigmore Hall, and later on at the Bachfest Leipzig. We caught up with the tenor during his preparations as Tom reflects on the famous role: 

"I imagine that we are a small group of Jesus’ disciples, gathering to recall and process the terrible events that we have recently witnessed." 

Read the Q&A with Tom